Mark Zuckerberg claims to have called Obama over US internet surveillance

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Facebook CEO has once again astonished the world by claiming that he called the most powerful person in the world, President Barack Obama, to express his frustration over alleged governments surveillance of Facebook and the Internet in general.

Given that Facebook’s own privacy record is not squeaky clean, this comes as a bit of a surprise and it raises questions on Facebook’s moral authority over the issue.

In recent times, Facebook and other giant tech companies were fingered as reluctant participants in the National Security Agency’s (NSA) top-secret snooping and personal data siphoning program called PRISM.

In a post on his Facebook wall, Mark Zuckerberg said he was confused and frustrated by “repeated reports of the behavior of the US government”.

In probably the strongest swipe at the US government, the Facebook CEO went on to say, “When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government”.

His call to Obama didn’t seem to yield much as he said, “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”.

Here’s the full statement from the Facebook CEO:

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.

 

 

One response

  1. tinm@n

    “The most powerful person in the world…”

    meh

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