Google co-founder and CEO, Larry Page, broke the silence on Friday and vehemently distanciated his company from any involvement with the infamous secret spy program carried out by the National Security Agency.
Page's statement comes as a rebuttal to the news reports alleging that the search giant would have opened its servers to governmental spooks.
The statement, posted in the company's official blog, read:
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.
Since the apparently leaked National Security Agency document about a PRISM surveillance program found its way to the light, the internet has been flooded with public outrage. The program gives the federal government surreptitious access to customer information held by Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other Internet companies, according to reports from the Washington Post and The Guardian.
Except for Verizon, which The Guardian reported on Wednesday its involvement with the NSA surveillance program, no other tech or telecommunication company confirmed involvement.
