Zuckerberg Voices Frustration With Obama Over NSA
PALO ALTO (AP) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he's called President Barack Obama to express his frustration over what he says is long-lasting damage caused by the U.S. government's surveillance programs.
Posting on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg wrote Thursday that he's "been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the U.S. government." He adds that when Facebook's "engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government."
The post comes a day after the news site Intercept reported that the National Security Agency has impersonated a Facebook server to infect surveillance targets' computers and get files from a hard drive. The NSA says the report is "inaccurate."
White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden confirmed that the president spoke with Zuckerberg.
Read Zuckerberg's full post below:
"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."
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