Google chairman: NSA spying on our
data centres 'outrageous'
Eric Schmidt says company has
lodged complaints with NSA, White House and Congress as criticism hardens in Silicon Valley
Rory Carroll in Los Angeles
theguardian.com, Monday 4 November
2013 15.40 EST
Eric Schmidt, the
executive chairman of Google, has attacked the US government for apparently
breaking into the connections that link the company's data centres around the
world as "outrageous" and described other surveillance practices as
"possibly illegal".
Speaking at an event in Hong Kong,
Schmidt stepped up the company's response to revelations in the Washington Post
that the National Security Agency, working with its British counterpart, GCHQ,
had broken into fibre optic cables that carry the transfer of data around the
world for Google and Yahoo.
"It's really outrageous that
the National Security Agency was
looking between the Google data
centers, if that's true," Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal.
"The steps that the
organization was willing to do without good judgment to pursue its mission and
potentially violate people's privacy, it's not OK."
The comments reflected Silicon Valley's hardening criticism of government
snooping amid continued revelations based on documents leaked by the former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden.
Just two months ago, Schmidt
declined to "pass judgment" on the surveillance programmes.
But last week it was reported that
the NSA intercepted communications links used by Google and Yahoo to move vast
amounts of data between overseas data centres.
On Monday, the Washington Post
published further Snowden documents and additional context for its story. Among
the details published in the latest report is the claim the interception took
place on "British territory".
It also claimed that none of the
statements issued by the NSA since the story was published contained
substantive denials. It said the source documents showed the NSA, rather than
break directly into Google or Yahoo data centres, intercepted communication
between them that ran on private fibre optic cable circuits. The former is
known as "data at rest", the latter as "data on the fly".
It was clear spies broke into both
companies' private "clouds", or internal networks, said the report,
because some of the extracted data existed nowhere else.
It remained unclear how the NSA
did this, and whether it had help from inside the technology giants.
Asked if it had launched an
internal security review, Google on Monday reissued a statement given last week
from chief legal officer David Drummond, saying the company did not give access
to its systems to any government and that it was expanding encryption across
more Google services and links.
In his interview, Schmidt said
Google had lodged complaints with the NSA, the White House and members of
Congress. He also attacked the separate NSA program that sweeps up the
telephone metadata relating millions of Americans. "The NSA allegedly
collected the phone records of 320 million people in order to identify roughly
300 people who might be a risk. It's just bad public policy … and perhaps
illegal," he said.
Google itself has faced repeated
accusations of privacy violations, including illicitly tracking web browsing.
Schmidt has made no secret that
the company tests boundaries of what is acceptable. "Google policy is to
get right up to the creepy line and not cross it," he said in 2010.
Outcries in Europe and growing
momentum in Washington
to rein in surveillance has put the NSA on the defensive.
Asked to respond to Schmidt's
criticism, an NSA spokesperson said the agency was "focused on valid
foreign intelligence targets" and referred to a previous statement that
press articles had misstated facts and mischaracterised NSA activities.
"NSA conducts all of its
activities in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies – and
assertions to the contrary do a grave disservice to the nation, its allies and
partners, and the men and women who make up the National Security Agency."
Last week the agency's director,
General Keith Alexander, said the agency had not used a presidential order to
circumvent domestic legal restrictions: "I can tell you factually we do
not have access to Google servers, Yahoo servers. We go through a court order."
National Security Agency (NSA)
PRISM
PRISM is a clandestine
mass electronic surveillance data mining program known to have been operated by
the United States National Security
Agency (NSA) since 2007.[3][4][5] PRISM is a government code name for a
data-collection effort known officially by the SIGAD US-984XN.[6][7] The Prism
program collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to
Internet companies such as Google Inc.
under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that
match court-approved search terms.[8] The NSA can use these Prism requests to
target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the
Internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering
systems discarded earlier,[9][10] and to get data that is easier to handle,
among other things.[11]
PRISM began in 2007 in the wake of
the passage of the Protect America Act under the Bush Administration.[12][13]
The program is operated under the supervision of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISA Court, or FISC) pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA).[14] Its existence was leaked six years later by NSA
contractor Edward Snowden, who
warned that the extent of mass data collection was far greater than the public
knew and included what he characterized as "dangerous" and
"criminal" activities.[15] The disclosures were published by The
Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6, 2013. Subsequent documents have
demonstrated a financial arrangement between NSA's Special Source Operations
division (SSO) and PRISM partners in the millions of dollars.
Note: PRISM reportedly
collects data from Google Inc., the Microsoft Corporation and is a data-mining
program for the National Security Agency
(NSA).
Booz Allen
Hamilton is a contractor for the National
Security Agency (NSA).
Edward Snowden was
an employee at Booz Allen Hamilton,
and leaked information about the National
Security Agency (NSA).
Robert S. Osborne
is the EVP & general counsel for Booz
Allen Hamilton, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
Commercial Club of Chicago,
Members Directory
Please note: This link for the
members of the Commercial Club of Chicago can no longer be found.
R.
Eden Martin is the president of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Michelle
Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Sidley Austin
LLP is the lobby firm for the Hong
Kong Trade Development Council.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Newton
N. Minow is senior counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
Valerie B. Jarrett
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, and her great uncle is Vernon E. Jordan Jr.
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank).
William H. Gates
III is a co-chair for the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, and a co-founder & chairman for the Microsoft Corporation.
National
Security Agency (NSA) was a
grant recipient from the Microsoft
Corporation.
Gary
F. Locke represented in the Microsoft
Corporation in China,
the commerce secretary for the Barack
Obama administration, and is the China U.S. ambassador.
Jon M. Huntsman
Jr. was the China U.S. ambassador for the Barack Obama administration, and a distinguished
fellow at the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
Sheryl K.
Sandberg was a trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and the VP for Google Inc.
Censorship by Google
Google adhered to
the Internet censorship policies of China,[22]
enforced by means of filters colloquially known as "The Great Firewall of
China" until March 2010.
Vernon E. Jordan Jr. is Valerie B. Jarrett’s great uncle, a
senior counsel for Akin, Gump, Strauss,
Hauer & Feld, LLP, an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank), a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), was the president of the Economic
Club of Washington, and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant
(think tank).
Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP is the lobby firm for the Hong Kong Trade Development Council.
David M.
Rubenstein is the president of the Economic
Club of Washington, and a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think
tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution
(think tank), and the New
America Foundation.
George
Soros is the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.
Eric E. Schmidt was a funder for the New America Foundation, is the
chairman of the New America Foundation, the chairman for Google Inc., and a 2008 Bilderberg conference
participant (think tank).
Google's Eric Schmidt talks about how to run the world
(not that he wants to)
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
...as Schmidt wrapped up a speech
to the Economic Club of Washington
during a luncheon in a packed ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Click here
for an audio clip of Schmidt's comments.
The appearance was a homecoming of
sorts for Schmidt. Vernon E. Jordan Jr.,
the club's president and a former President Clinton advisor, noted that Schmidt
was born a few blocks away from the hotel at George
Washington University
Hospital, and grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs. His mother, Ellie Schmidt, was
in the audience.
PRISM
reportedly collects data from Google Inc.,
the Microsoft Corporation and is a data-mining
program for the National Security Agency
(NSA).
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