Google has turned to the National Security Agency for technical assistance to learn more about the computer network attackers who breached the company’s cybersecurity defenses last year, a person with direct knowledge of the agreement said Thursday. The collaboration between Google, the world’s largest search engine company, and the federal agency in charge of global electronic surveillance raises both civil liberties issues and new questions about how much Google knew about the electronic thefts it experienced when it stated last month that it might end its business operations in China, where it said the attacks originated. The agreement was first reported on Wednesday evening by The Washington Post.

A federal judge has tossed out a pair of lawsuits accusing government officials during former president George W. Bush’s era of “dragnet spying” on people’s Internet and telephone communications. US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker said in a written decision late Thursday that the named plaintiffs did not show they were victims of spying and therefore lacked standing to champion the class-action suits.

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act, in part, to “provid[e] enhanced investigative tools” to “assist in the prevention of future terrorist activities and the preliminary acts and crimes which further such activities.” To that end, the Act eased restrictions on the government’s ability to collect information regarding people’s activities and conversations, both in domestic criminal investigations and in the realms of foreign intelligence gathering and national security.

A married couple in their 70s was accused Friday of spying for Fidel Castro’s Cuba for 30 years while the husband was a top intelligence analyst at the State Department. Walter Kendall Myers, known as “Agent 202″ to the Cubans, and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, “Agent 123″ and “E-634,” were nabbed at a Washington hotel following an undercover FBI sting. They allegedly admitted their treachery spanned decades, U.S. officials said.