The Guardian – by Dominic Rushe
Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook struck back on Wednesday at critics who have charged tech companies with doing too little to fight off NSA surveillance. Mayer said executives faced jail if they revealed government secrets.
Yahoo and Facebook, along with other tech firms, are pushing for the right to be allowed to publish the number of requests they receive from the spy agency. Companies are forbidden by law to disclose how much data they provide.
During an interview at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Mayer was asked why tech companies had not simply decided to tell the public more about what the US surveillance industry was up to. “Releasing classified information is treason and you are incarcerated,” she said.
Mayer said she was “proud to be part of an organisation that from the beginning, in 2007, has been sceptical of – and has been scrutinizing – those requests [from the NSA].”
Yahoo has previously unsuccessfully sued the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, which provides the legal framework for NSA surveillance. In 2007 it asked to be allowed to publish details of requests it receives from the spy agency. “When you lose and you don’t comply, it’s treason,” said Mayer. “We think it make more sense to work within the system,” she said.
Zuckerberg said the government had done a “bad job” of balancing people’s privacy and its duty to protect. “Frankly I think the government blew it,” he said.
He said after the news broke in the Guardian and the Washington Post about Prism, the government surveillance programme that targets major internet companies: “The government response was, ‘Oh don’t worry we are not spying on any Americans.’ Oh wonderful that’s really helpful to companies that are trying to serve people around the world and that’s really going to inspire confidence in American internet companies.”
“I thought that was really bad,” he said. Zuckerberg said Facebook and others were pushing successfully for more transparency. “We are not at the end of this. I wish that the government would be more proactive about communicating. We are not psyched that we had to sue in order to get this and we take it very seriously,” he said.
On Monday, executives from Yahoo, Facebook, Google and other tech leaders met the president’s group on intelligence and communications, tasked with reviewing the US’s intelligence and communications technologies in the wake of the NSA revelations.
The meeting came as Yahoo and Facebook filed suits once more to force the Fisa court to allow them to disclose more information.
In its motion, Yahoo said: “Yahoo has been unable to engage fully in the debate about whether the government has properly used its powers, because the government has placed a prior restraint on Yahoo’s speech.”
It went on: “Yahoo’s inability to respond to news reports has harmed its reputation and has undermined its business not only in the United States but worldwide. Yahoo cannot respond to such reports with mere generalities,” the company said.
Microsoft and Google also filed their latest legal briefs on Monday to force the Fisa court to disclose more information.
In a blogpost, Google said it was asking for permission to publish “detailed statistics about the types (if any) of national security requests” it receives under Fisa.
“Given the important public policy issues at stake, we have also asked the court to hold its hearing in open rather than behind closed doors. It’s time for more transparency,” said Google.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/11/yahoo-ceo-mayer-jail-nsa-surveillance
So the multi million (billion?) dollar eexecutives of these companies that we blindly trust with our data claim they kept silent because of the threat of jail?
It’s nice to know that the people in charge are willing to take a stand and risk a high profile arrest that would only highlight their efforts to protect the user from the clutches of an overzealous government agency. Wait, they didn’t…
They buckled under, opened that candy store, and let the feds run wild grabbing whatever goodies they wanted without restriction or accountability.
The more they give lip service to being trapped by the system, and not actually taking a stand, shows that they are actually a part of it, and have no incentive, motivation, or intent to change it. “Just following orders” doesn’t apply solely to military personnel. These executives care more about bonuses and perks than the userbase they pretend to represent.
But then Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) told us exactly what they think of their users (extract from an email);
Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
Zuckerberg: I don’t know why.
Zuckerberg: They “trust me”
Zuckerberg: Dumb f*cks.
Every last one of the CEO’s of the tech companies who have been used by our criminal gov….
should change their software programing so that the criminals can not access it………..PERIOD
and if need be…….go to jail
They would not be there long….
and the back lash against the fed gov. may just aid our entire country in being liberated from these freaks who claim….superior minds….
when in fact they are in possession of an ill mind….meaning a lessor mind…… rather,.not a superior mind….
jail by feds or rope by customers.
at the end of the day the thing that scares these people the most is being poor…
so with that said dont do business with them and they dont make money. Then they cant afford the million dollar houses. And when they end up on the street because their house burns down … maybe jail will be a warm meal alternative.
Cowards. We can only beat fascism if we remember they can’t put us all in prison. I know I’m on plenty of ‘watch’ lists as are most readers of this site I guess.
But I will keep reading, keep posting my own stuff and trying to spread the message. And if I can have people lined up who will speak out when ‘they’ come for me, I’m sure billionaire CEOs can.
Ian, I saved the link to your site and will go back to it in a minute to see what you have to say.
I agree with your comment that you have built a base that would come to your side if they ever came for you. I feel the same. As I feel pretty confident that I have too.
They are a local judge, a cop, a college professor, a couple of pastors, a few churches, a dentist, a gun shop owner and everyone that works there, and engineer architect, many building contractors, many school teachers, a retired sheriff, a EMT firefighter, a couple members of city counsel, a couple of major airline pilots, a museum curator, 4-5 doctors, a hospital administrator, a handful of nurses, a recently retired army colonel, etc. I could go on and on with people who know me personally and see me on a regular bases. Who I have contributed to the scaled falling off of their eyes, and I don’t even have my own website. I consider From the Trenches as my own website… haha, sorry, Henry!
They distrust the government more and more everyday, and I have prepared them for the for when they start picking people up “Patriots”, and framing them, that we have to stand up for them.
We have the advantage over them now, because we have been educating everyone with the truth. Just a year ago half of them didn’t know that the Federal Reserve was a private central bank, or what a chemtrail is, and on and on.
It is great, we live in the most exciting times. Our du-diligence is paying off. Now, everyone I know is watching for a major false flag to happen, and they won’t get away with it.
No need to apologize to me. From the Trenches is your site and every other American national’s that contributes and writes here, as you people are the site.
god…….I have had an FBI file since hand writing my local military draft board in 1968 that I was not going to be drafted…and was on my way to canada to school at mcgill university for a masters in Mathimatics. which I did, do went to canada…I was 22yrs old a recent college grad going this on my own…no money from folks, one of whom had already passed on, and no encouragement or discouragement, either way, and the fbi sent an agent to my mothers home, asking “whats wrong with this young man?” I went through the legal part of becoming a landed immigrant in Canada, which was at the time, one could not legally work for 3 months….and so forth and ran out of my own money….no one else’s…mine…and decided to return home mostly cause,,,I wondered if I would have to live entirely away with the threat of prison hanging over me….a person is 22 yrs old…and such things are difficult..to decide alone. So i got drafted into this mans army…sent to Nam, survived and have often thought “what might have been”….oh well, remorse is only good for wallowing in…I survived without being shot up…and am here to carry on the cause of our American Constitution and all those souls who read it and put themselves out there to defend it….
Bravo….my friends