According to the Chairman of Google Inc., Eric Schmidt, the recent revelations that have been made regarding the alleged eavesdropping operations conducted by National Security Agency are simply ‘outrageous’ and may even be termed illegal in some circumstances. This week, Schmidt simply unleashed on the NSA while he was weighing in with Wall Street Journal this week and he was angered at the reports that the intelligence gathering agency of the United States had simply infiltrated communication links between the data centers that were operated by its competing search engine Yahoo and that of Google Inc. as well.
Leaked documentation had been published by the Wall Street Journal days earlier, which was credited to Edward Snowden, the intelligence contractor who had turned into a whistleblower. In the documentation, allegations were made against the NSA stating that it had tapped into the unencrypted data streams that existed between the centers and the private and confidential data of millions of customers had been intercepted in this way. Schmidt, who has served as the chairman for the Silicon Valley search engine giant for more than a decade said that this act on behalf of the NSA was simply outrageous.
He said that it wasn’t acceptable for the intelligence agency to pursue its mission by taking such steps because this violated the privacy of individuals. He also said that these revelations meant that there were perhaps more to come. Since June, classified NSA documents are being constantly published by the major media outlets that are spread all over the globe as revealed by Mr. Snowden. These documents have informed the world regarding the various spy programs that are conducted by the US government, but have an impact on the entire world. Also, previous documentation had revealed that an operation called PRISM had been followed when Google’s networks were used for collecting data.
However, the latest leaks suggested that yet another NSA surveillance program had been carried out when communications that had passed between different communication centers had been compromised. Last week, it had been stated that the NSA conducted a program called the MUSCULAR for breaking the links between data centers of Yahoo and Google secretly, but in conjunction with Britain’s Government Communication Headquarters. Unbeknownst to the companies in question, millions of records had been collected in this way. It was also said that Google had only recently started encrypting these links, but Yahoo has not shown any signs of beginning encryption.
In the meanwhile, even Twitter had announced that it would be encrypting its messages and other companies are going down the same path in order to prevent government spying. David Drummond, the Chief Legal Officer of Google said that company had always been worried about the kind of snooping that was done through MUSCULAR. Google’s Schmidt said that they were understanding of the government’s need to conduct intelligence gathering operations to prevent terrorism, if the latest revelations were true, then they were simply unnecessary and outrageous because they infringed on the privacy rights of every innocent individual.
