Two of the world's technological "giants", Google and Yahoo, reacted angrily to information that the US National Security Agency (NSA) is intercepting the key communication pillars that carry the information of the two companies' users around the world.
According to the Washington Post, documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials showed that the NSA could obtain this information from hundreds of millions of users "whenever it wanted.".
The same documents state that the NSA, in collaboration with the British agency GCHQ, was able to copy huge amounts of data through the fiber optic cables that carried this information between Google and Yahoo data centers around the world to the two companies' headquarters in Silicon Valley, California.
In a statement, Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, said his company was "outraged" by the latest revelations. "We've long been concerned about the potential for this kind of surveillance, which is why we continue to extend encryption to more and more Google services and websites," Drummond said. "We don't give any government, not even the U.S. government, access to our systems. We're outraged at the lengths the government appears to have gone to to intercept data from our private fiber-optic networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform.".
Yahoo responded in the same vein. "We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers and have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or any other government agency," the company said in a statement.
It was at this point that suspicions about the wiretapping fell on the company that provides the fiber optic cables to the two companies, called Level 3. The company states that it complies with the legal framework of each country in which it operates but does not deny that it provided assistance. “Generally, governments requesting assistance for law enforcement or security investigations prohibit disclosure of the assistance we provide,” a Level 3 statement said.
As reported by the Washington Post, the NSA has been intercepting the data of users outside of American territory, thereby circumventing American laws that prohibit access to the information of people residing in the United States. On the contrary, these interceptions are covered by the executive order signed by American President Barack Obama, which allows the agencies to gather information in the context of operations abroad.
The story is expected to bring even more turmoil to Washington's already troubled relations with Silicon Valley's tech giants. The tech giants are furious with the US government for the damage their companies' reputations have suffered since Edward Snowden's revelations about US surveillance. In fact, just last September, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg told a technology conference that the government has done a poor job of protecting citizens' privacy online. "I really think the government has screwed up," the co-founder of the popular social network said.
Source: tro-ma-ktiko.blogspot.gr
