- Google, Facebook Founders Express Fears Over NSA Access to Verizon Data
The founders of Google and Facebook say the NSA’s access to Verizon call records is too broad.
In online posts today the leaders of Google and Facebook both said they didn’t know anything about the National Security Agency using a program called PRISM to access their users’ data. While neither Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg nor Google’s Larry Page did anything to explain what data they provided to the NSA via other means, they both clearly registered concerns over the tactics the agency was revealed this week to have used to get phone-record data from Verizon customers.
- NSA Data-Scooping: A Coming Backlash in Europe?
The same big U.S. Internet companies that reportedly handed over data wholesale to the NSA have been promising compliance with tough EU privacy standards.
Most European nations have long had stronger privacy laws than those in the United States. As a result U.S. Internet companies doing business there–incluiding Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and AOL–have signed on to so-called “safe harbor” principles, promising a European level of privacy protection. Now, of course, it appears they’ve also been providing gobs of data about some overseas customers to the U.S. National Security Agency (see “NSA Surveillance Reflects a Broader Interpretation of the Patriot Act”).
- NSA Surveillance Reflects a Broader Interpretation of the Patriot Act
Privacy advocates have warned for years about the kinds of surveillance revelations that were aired this week.
Of the two big U.S. government surveillance projects that came to light this week, the one that might seem less startling—the fact that the National Security Agency gathers Verizon’s U.S. call records—troubled privacy activists more than the report that the NSA can get user data such as e-mails and photographs held by Internet companies including Google and Facebook.
- Stories from Around the Web (Week Ending June 7, 2013)
A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.
The Great VC Coin Rush: At the Bitcoin Convention
There has been lots of coverage, from us and others, about the potential importance of bitcoins. Even so I enjoyed how this piece got into the culture of bitcoin.
—Brian Bergstein, deputy editor
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