{"id":79787,"date":"2013-06-08T10:14:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-08T08:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=79787"},"modified":"2013-06-10T09:36:10","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T07:36:10","slug":"google-and-facebook-slates-internet-snooping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/79787-google-and-facebook-slates-internet-snooping.html","title":{"rendered":"Google and Facebook slate Internet snooping"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google<\/a> chief Larry Page<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> co-founder Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> condemned online spying Friday and called for governments to be more revealing about snooping on the Internet.<\/p>\n

“We understand that the US and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety — including sometimes by using surveillance,” Google chief and co-founder Larry Page said in a blog post.<\/p>\n

“But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.”<\/p>\n

Page put his personal stamp on the California-based Internet giant’s denial that it allowed US intelligence agencies to mine data from its servers.<\/p>\n

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg did likewise in a statement posted online later in the day.<\/p>\n

“Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk… And if we did, we would fight it aggressively.”<\/p>\n

Google, Facebook and other technology firms have vehemently denied that they knowingly took part in a secret program called PRISM that gave the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI backdoors into servers.<\/p>\n

“We have not joined any program that would give the US government or any other government direct access to our servers,” Page said.<\/p>\n

“Indeed, the US government does not have direct access or a ‘backdoor’ to the information stored in our data centers… We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.”<\/p>\n

The program was reportedly set up in 2007 and has grown to become the most prolific contributor to President Barack Obama<\/a>‘s Daily Brief, the US leader’s top-secret daily intelligence briefing.<\/p>\n

Some of the biggest firms in Silicon Valley were involved in the program, including Apple, AOL, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo and YouTube, reports said.<\/p>\n

Internet titans contacted by AFP denied providing intelligence agencies with backdoors to networks and held firm that they only cooperated with legal “frontdoor” requests for information.<\/p>\n

“This episode confirms what we have long believed — there needs to be a more transparent approach,” Page said.<\/p>\n

Google routinely publishes transparency reports listing numbers of requests for user data by governments and how they were handled.<\/p>\n

“We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe,” Zuckerberg said, speaking on behalf of the leading social network.<\/p>\n

“It’s the only way to protect everyone’s civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term.”<\/p>\n

More global security news<\/h3>\n

Internet giants deny granting US government \u2018direct access\u2019 to servers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Internet tapping aimed at non-US people: official<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

US defends massive phone record collection<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google chief Larry Page and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg condemned online spying Friday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":72588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[36,161,167,2802,1767,19823],"class_list":["post-79787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-active","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-larry-page","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-prism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79837,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79787\/revisions\/79837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}