Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg called US President Barrack Obama to express his frustration regarding the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance practices.
Zuckerberg put up a status update on Facebook sayiing, “I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.”
The update came a day after new documents were leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden which revealed that NSA was using an automated system called TURBINE to hack into millions of computers worldwide. The documents also revealed that NSA was using fake Facebook server and pages to infect a target’s computer.
“I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government,” Zuckerberg said.
Even though the social networking site has come under attack from privacy activists multiple times accusing it of handing over data to intelligence agencies, Zuckerberg has always denied that Facebook gives US government direct any access to its servers.
Read Zuckerberg’s full post here:
As the world becomes more complex and governments everywhere struggle, trust in the internet is more important today than ever.
The internet is our shared space. It helps us connect. It spreads opportunity. It enables us to learn. It gives us a voice. It makes us stronger and safer together.
To keep the internet strong, we need to keep it secure. That’s why at Facebook we spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure. We encrypt communications, we use secure protocols for traffic, we encourage people to use multiple factors for authentication and we go out of our way to help fix issues we find in other people’s services.
The internet works because most people and companies do the same. We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world.
This is why I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.
The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.
I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.
So it’s up to us — all of us — to build the internet we want. Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I’m committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part.
Source: Facebook