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If you've emailed your cousin in New York over the past few years — or even Skyped your aunt in Mumbai — the chances are good you've corresponded with an uncle too. Uncle Sam, that is. A 41-slide National Security Agency (NSA) PowerPoint presentation leaked to the Washington Post and the Guardian earlier this week revealed that for the past six years, the largest US internet companies have given the US government direct access to their servers to collect all kinds of data, including email and voice over IP calls, of millions of people all over the world.
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple have all given the NSA direct access to their servers in an NSA scheme called PRISM, according to what appears to be a training slideshow. On Friday, President Barack Obama said he thought the country's digital surveillance programme "struck the right balance" between privacy, security, and curiously, convenience, as he defended PRISM and a related report that suggests that the government routinely collects records call log data on every telephone call placed by every American in the US.
Meanwhile, the tech companies named in the NSA deck have denied their involvement. In a Friday blog post titled, "What the...?", Google CEO Larry Page and Google's chief legal officer David Drummond wrote that "we have not joined any programme that would give the US government — or any other government — direct access to our servers. Indeed, the US government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday." Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied cooperating with the programme. Microsoft and Apple executives denied involvement.
Some say the media firestorm has been overblown. Ed Luttwak, a military strategist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, questioned the news value of the report. "Who did not know it?" he wrote in an email to ET Magazine.
In fact, there have been a number of earlier reports suggesting that the US engages in massive data surveillance: a 2011 report, for example, estimated that 854,000 people work in US data intelligence operations.
The impact of the revelations is uncertain. On the domestic front, there may be little fallout. Nir Kossovsky, CEO of Steel City Re in Pittsburgh, a corporate reputation consultancy, predicts that the revelations will have little or no impact on the tech companies' reputation. "Notwithstanding the media's current interest, and possible protests by the usual anti-government activists, there will be little effect on long-term reputational value because the processes by which the data are being collected are governed by rules sanctioned by all three branches of government and both major political parties," he wrote in an email.
Unrepresented people, however, may be more upset. Regulators in a number of European countries, which have stricter data privacy laws than the US, have expressed concern about the revelations. Peter Schaar, Germany's federal commissioner for data protection, told tech site Gigaom that he expected that the German government would be looking for some clarification from the US about what information was being gathered on its citizens, and that "the reports illustrate the importance of strengthening the European data protection law".
In the UK, too, some British privacy groups were concerned that GCHQ, the British electronic eavesdropping and security agency, had access to the PRISM system. Beyond the political fallout, there could be business implications as well. In the short run, Kossovsky appears to be right: Google, Apple, and Facebook stocks all rose on Friday — but it's hard to see how the controversy could be a plus for US tech giants looking to profit from the current migration to cloud-based computing and Big Data analytics.
US data surveillance: Welcome to the anti-social network - The Economic Times
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple have all given the NSA direct access to their servers in an NSA scheme called PRISM, according to what appears to be a training slideshow. On Friday, President Barack Obama said he thought the country's digital surveillance programme "struck the right balance" between privacy, security, and curiously, convenience, as he defended PRISM and a related report that suggests that the government routinely collects records call log data on every telephone call placed by every American in the US.
Meanwhile, the tech companies named in the NSA deck have denied their involvement. In a Friday blog post titled, "What the...?", Google CEO Larry Page and Google's chief legal officer David Drummond wrote that "we have not joined any programme that would give the US government — or any other government — direct access to our servers. Indeed, the US government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday." Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied cooperating with the programme. Microsoft and Apple executives denied involvement.
Some say the media firestorm has been overblown. Ed Luttwak, a military strategist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, questioned the news value of the report. "Who did not know it?" he wrote in an email to ET Magazine.
In fact, there have been a number of earlier reports suggesting that the US engages in massive data surveillance: a 2011 report, for example, estimated that 854,000 people work in US data intelligence operations.
The impact of the revelations is uncertain. On the domestic front, there may be little fallout. Nir Kossovsky, CEO of Steel City Re in Pittsburgh, a corporate reputation consultancy, predicts that the revelations will have little or no impact on the tech companies' reputation. "Notwithstanding the media's current interest, and possible protests by the usual anti-government activists, there will be little effect on long-term reputational value because the processes by which the data are being collected are governed by rules sanctioned by all three branches of government and both major political parties," he wrote in an email.
Unrepresented people, however, may be more upset. Regulators in a number of European countries, which have stricter data privacy laws than the US, have expressed concern about the revelations. Peter Schaar, Germany's federal commissioner for data protection, told tech site Gigaom that he expected that the German government would be looking for some clarification from the US about what information was being gathered on its citizens, and that "the reports illustrate the importance of strengthening the European data protection law".
In the UK, too, some British privacy groups were concerned that GCHQ, the British electronic eavesdropping and security agency, had access to the PRISM system. Beyond the political fallout, there could be business implications as well. In the short run, Kossovsky appears to be right: Google, Apple, and Facebook stocks all rose on Friday — but it's hard to see how the controversy could be a plus for US tech giants looking to profit from the current migration to cloud-based computing and Big Data analytics.
US data surveillance: Welcome to the anti-social network - The Economic Times
