Facebook, Google and Yahoo have all issued denials that they have been providing the US National Security Agency with user data, amid a growing global privacy scandal.
All three companies have issued strong denials they have been part of the covert spy programme PRISM, whose existence came to light last week.
Secret documents obtained last week by The Guardian and Washington Post indicate that the highly classified operation, known as PRISM, granted the NSA free rein to access technology firms networks at any time, giving the agency access to the time, location and content of messages.
PRISM is primarily geared toward foreign and terror intelligence gathering but also catches home grown users.
In the initial report, nine firms were alleged to be willing accomplices in the scheme; including Yahoo! PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple.
The news has sparked widespread concern in the US. Nearly 20,000 people have signed a petition at Progressive Change Campaign Committee calling on Congress to hold investigations.
A separate programme, also disclosed by The Guardian, has been used to scoop up the telephone records of millions of Americans.
President Barack Obama and the chief of US intelligence said the secret programmes as vital to keeping Americans safe.
He said the US was “going to have to make some choices between balancing privacy and security to protect against terror”.
Watch this Bloomberg report featuring Obama’s commenets on the NSA’a activities below:
‘Outrageous’
“Facebook is not and has never been part of any programme to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers,” wrote the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and added that the latest media reports are “outrageous”.
Google’s chief Larry Page wrote in a blog: “We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process.”
Yahoo has also issued a denial, saying the company does not “voluntarily disclose user information [but] the disclosures that occur are in response to specific demands”.
However, according to people involved in the negotiations between the firms and the government quoted by the New York Times all the companies, except Twitter, have cooperated with intelligence officials “at least a bit”.
The Obama administration has been pushed on the defensive by the recent leaks and has tried to play down the developments.
Whistle-blower goes public
Today, a 29-year-old government contractor revealed himself as the source of disclosures about the US government’s secret surveillance programmes.
Edward Snowden, a former CIA and technician who has contracted for the National Security Agency (NSA), admitted his role in leaks to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers, saying the public needs to decide whether the programmes are right or wrong.
In an interview on The Guardian’s website, Mr Snowden said: “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”
He said he was willing to sacrifice a comfortable life “because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building”.
Watch the video below:
Implications for the EU
The Guardian went on to report that the UK’s GCHQ monitoring centre has been accessing information about British citizens through PRISM.
GCHQ is due to give a report to parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee over its links with the programme.
Foreign Secretary William Hague defended the integrity of GCHQ, dismissing as “fanciful” claims that the eavesdropping centre has stepped outside the law.
As more information emerges, the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament are increasingly concerned about prioritising European data privacy rules in a potential EU-US trade and investment pact.
Commenting on the implications for Europe, Hannes Swoboda, president of the S&D Group, said: “Data privacy is an integral right for citizens that must be respected – both by governments and companies. Retrieving information from private companies’ servers – without the knowledge of either the companies or the users concerned – does not comply in any way with European data privacy standards.
“We call on the European Commission to verify whether EU data protection legislation was respected in cases involving EU citizens. Furthermore, the Commission must ensure that the highest standards of data privacy, as defined by the European Parliament on several occasions, are used as the benchmark in negotiations of the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.”
Read the Google blog post here
