Whose CEO says internet companies have been put under serious pressure by the US government. Not to talk about what information intelligence agencies are requesting. She even said that talking about the prism spy program could see her face charges of treason. RT's Marina Portnaya joins me from New York. So, Marina, big corporations are speaking out aren't they? Tell us more about what's been said so far.
Well, Yahoo and Facebook are among the big data companies that have faced mounting criticism for violating users privacy by complying with the NSA Surveillance Program, but according to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, ah, her hands were tied and rejecting government requests would have amounted to treason. Miss Mayer made her comments at a San Francisco tech crunch press conference where she, and Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg were...ah, told the audience they were obliged, er, to comply with Washington spy programs. Miss Mayer told ah, those in the crowd that it makes more sense for ah, big tech companies, such as Yahoo to work within the system and fighting the NSA through law suits have so far proved unsuccessful. She also, ah, said that ah, she's only allowed to disclose a limited amount of data because releasing classified information surrounding NSA programs is punishable with jail.
Whose CEO says internet companies have been put under serious pressure by the US government. Not to talk about what information intelligence agencies are requesting. She even said that talking about the prism spy program could see her face charges of treason. RT's Marina Portnaya joins me from New York. So, Marina, big corporations are speaking out aren't they? Tell us more about what's been said so far.
Well, Yahoo and Facebook are among the big data companies that have faced mounting criticism for violating users privacy by complying with the NSA Surveillance Program, but according to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, ah, her hands were tied and rejecting government requests would have amounted to treason. Miss Mayer made her comments at a San Francisco tech crunch press conference where she, and Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg were...ah, told the audience they were obliged, er, to comply with Washington spy programs. Miss Mayer told ah, those in the crowd that it makes more sense for ah, big tech companies, such as Yahoo to work within the system and fighting the NSA through law suits have so far proved unsuccessful. She also, ah, said that ah, she's only allowed to disclose a limited amount of data because releasing classified information surrounding NSA programs is punishable with jail.
Mr Zuckerberg went on ah, to say that the Obama Administration, he believes, has done a bad job at balancing national security and citizens' privacy rights. The Facebook CEO said that the White House's initial reaction, ah, to the NSA's spying of revelations have worked against ah, the interests of US tech firms ah, that are operating abroad. Now this is the first time we've heard from the heads of such big corporations speaking publicly about the NSA scandal while acknowledging that, ah, the spy agency requests, ah, use user data and those requests can't be rejected. In the mean time it seems that every week the public is receiving new details about how pervasive the NSA's tactics have been, and how much authority this agency actually wields.
Extraordinary to think that the CEO of Yahoo! says she could actually face um, treason charges. Have big corporations been, (extraordinary)have the big corporations been silenced before by the government in, in this sort of way?
Well, I think that there's an effort from, from everybody that we've interviewed over the course of the past months, there's clearly a consensus that there's an effort, there's a push ah, to silence ah, these corporations but it appears that these big data companies like Facebook and Yahoo! and Google are beginning to follow in the footsteps of smaller companies that have actually stood up to the NSA and refused to comply with their spying requests. For example, the owner of Xmission, that's an internet provider, he has refused to comply with NSA data requests. Ah, Pete Ashtown told RT that the only solution for keeping the government from spying ah, is using encryption and having service providers that are willing to up against fraud surveillance and wholesale monitoring. Another example is Lavabit, an email provider, which was actually used by NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden. Instead of complying with an alleged ah, US secret surveillance order, ah, Lavabit owner, Ladar Levison told RT that he decided to shut down his company because he was no longer able to assure that his clients, that his, ah, his clients emails would be secure. So instead of complying with what the US government wanted, he decided to take a stand and shut down the company. He suffered a big financial loss because he became very popular after ah, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA's ah, spying programs. But ah, you know,the ah, the ability ah, he says for the government to punish people that don't agree with them and don't comply with them is profound. He says he believes the US government has the ability to take your business, your money and your freedom, if you reject their requests.
but all of this is an indication of the NSA's ah, power and that power actually recently came to light this week when a computer science professor at John Hopkins University, a prominent university in the United States, was actually forced to take down one of his blog posts on the university site after he posted an article about America's spying program. Now the post was written by a cryptography professor Matthew Green. Ah, it was highly critical of the NSA, specifically how ah, he says the reckless behavior of the agency in attacking online security astonished him. Now Green said that the acting dean of the engineering school of the university told him that if he doesn't take down his post, his critical posts on the NSA, he would need a lawyer and this of course left a US professor, fearing for his academic freedom.
I wrote a post about ah, these new revelations that came out last week about the NSA breaking encryption, breaking cryptography. Um, that's my research area so ah, one of the things I do is I write a blog hats focused at technical people but also at journalists and people who aren't, you know, cryptographers themselves. Ah, so I tried to take a pass at this story and explain what it meant that the NSA was breaking this technology. Um and that led to the blog post which a lot of people read. Somebody somewhere um, made a decision that there might be classified material on this blog. Ah the instinct was to shut the blog down rather than to, sort of investigate that. I think that was a mistake. I ah, don't think I'll ever know exactly where that came from and I hope it never happens again.
Now according to some reports ah, the NSA and the Department of Defense has strong connections to part of Jo...John Hopkins University and that's what led for this pressure to be put on the professor but after it became public, according to recent reports, the university has backed off and now has allowed this professor to publish whatever material he wants to.
Marina thanks for that. Marina Portnaya live there in New York. Well the on..
