Google provided the lengthiest statement yet on reports of government access to user data through some of the country’s largest tech companies, re-iterating yet again that the company has not provided the government with “open-ended access” to private data.
Google was one of nine tech companies named in the Washington Post and Guardian reports of a government program called PRISM that rocked the technology community Thursday, and which we are following in its entirety here. In CEO Larry Page’s statement, he also called for more transparency regarding the scope of requests for user data from the government, and my colleauge David Meyer has begun exploring the tremendous fallout of this news in Europe, where users are expressing real concern about U.S. government surveillance of foreign users.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg released a very similar statement on Friday as well, which can be found on his Facebook page here.
Here’s the full statement, which is also available on Google’s website:
Dear Google users—
You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.
First, we have 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 centers. 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.
Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer
This post was updated throughout the day as more information became available.
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