The Washington Post and The Guardians reports about a top secret surveillance program called PRISM which allows the US government to keep track of users’ data by getting direct access to the servers of top tech companies has brought several companies under fire including Google. Internal documents revealed that the search engine giant was also among the major tech companies which are included in this program. To clear Google’s name from the latest controversy the CEO of the company Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond have now jointly released a statement to knock down the claims of the Mountain View-based company’s involvement in PRISM program.
The joint statement says that Google has “not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centres. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.
Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.”
With this statement, although, Google has tried its best tp get away from the situation but there is still confusion. For instance some people still wonder whether the search engine giant is a participant of a similar program which goes by another name or it offers indirect access to any of the government agencies. However, when TNW asked the question, Google’s answer was a firm “no.”
Source: TNW, 9to5Google
Photo: Knowledge
Google Will Soon Launch HTML5 Development Tool Called Web Designer
BlackBerry Claims More Than Half of US Fortune 500 Companies are Currently Testing or Using the New BB10
Lunches So Good Kids Can’t Ignore Them
Invigorating Ginger Smoothie
The U.K.’s Youngest Parents Ever
The new hair Jennifer Lawrence