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NSA hacking angers Google, Yahoo

China.org.cn, October 31, 2013

• The world's two giant Internet companies Google and Yahoo reacted furiously at the latest report that the National Security Agency (NSA) has secretly tapped into  the main communications links to gather hundreds of millions of user accounts, including those of Americans.  

  The world's two giant Internet companies Google and Yahoo reacted furiously at the latest report that the National Security Agency (NSA) has secretly tapped into the main communications links to gather hundreds of millions of user accounts, including those of Americans.

  The latest revelations by Edward Snowden indicated that the NSA, working with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), collect millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks, the Washington Post reported on Wedneday.

  Both companies denied that they have given the NSA or any other government agency acess to their data centers.

  Google's chief legal officer David Drummondn said in a statement "We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links, especially the links in the slide."

  "We do not provide any government, including the US government, with access to our systems. We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform," he added.

  Yahoo said, "We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency."

  The NSA issued a statement to deny the Washington Post' report, claiming that the paper's assertion that "we use Executive Order 12333 collection to get around the limitations imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and FAA 702 is not true."

  "The assertion that we collect vast quantities of U.S. persons' data from this type of collection is also not true," said the statement.

  "NSA applies Attorney General-approved processes to protect the privacy of U.S. persons - minimizing the likelihood of their information in our targeting, collection, processing, exploitation, retention, and dissemination," said the staement. "NSA is a foreign intelligence agency. And we're focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets only."

  And the NSA chief, Army Gen. Keith Alexanderd, denied his agency has illegally tapped into the servers of Internet companies.

  "The servers and everything we do with those, those companies work with us. They are compelled to work with us. This isn't something the court just said, 'Would you please work with them and throw data over it.' This is compelled. And this is specific requirements that come from a court order," Alexander said at a cybersecurity conference in Washington.

  "This is not NSA breaking into any databases. It would be illegal for us to do that. So, I don't know what the report is. But I can tell you factually we do not have access to Google servers, Yahoo servers. We go through a court order."

   

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