The Founder of Facebook is calling for more transparency from the NSA. Mark Zuckerberg said the Federal government failed to balance security with privacy when they started several surveillance programs. Kevin Tripp, The Voice of Russia correspondent, shared Zuckerberg's point of view on this matter.
What is Mark Zuckerberg’s main concern with these NSA surveillance programs? He has got a couple of concerns. The first one you’ve already touched on is that he believes it is the US government’s job to protect all of the American citizens and to protect our freedoms while also insuring our security but he believes that the US government and the NSA specifically did a bad job of balancing those two competing interests and as he said “the government blew it” to quote Mark Zuckerberg. He is also concerned that there is not enough transparency about these programs. He says that PRISM program, the controversial program that monitored a lot of Internet traffic was something that he never gave the government permission to use on Facebook servers that contradicts some documents that have been leaked. Nonetheless, he says this was not something he necessarily willingly went along with, at least when it comes to PRISM. He likes to see more transparency from the NSA and from the Federal government about what exactly the types in number of requests that they’ve been making have been with the Pfizer court in the last few months and years. Since the revelations about the NSA programs big internet companies such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google who have all been in this discussion about what exactly they can and have given up to the Federal government, I haven’t really heard much from these companies in the way of criticizing the NSA and it seems that Mark Zuckerberg is trying to separate himself from these surveillance programs, trying to condemn them, trying to show the American people that Facebook is different. Do you think that is what he is doing? Do you think it is effective? I think that is one of the things he is trying to do – is show that this was not something that he supported or was necessarily in concert with. But he is also trying to show that Facebook in his opinion is some place that values security and the information that the users share on Facebook. That is a problem that Facebook faces on its own. Even before the NSA programs people that use Facebook or considered using it were worried about security and what kind of data Facebook was sharing with the companies and venders that do business with Facebook, so you pile on the NSA allegations on top of that and Facebook I think more than any other tech company has really these two problems to deal with that sort of pile on on top of each other and can lead to greater concerns among its users. So, I think it is one of the reasons he has come out and asked for greater transparency. He has released a transparency report that shows that 9000 or less reports have been made in the last 6 months. He is saying it is not 10 million or a 100 million, it is 9000 or less but he is also suing the Federal government along with Yahoo and Google and Microsoft to try to reveal the exact number and type of requests that the NSA has been making. So, he has been able to show some transparency with respect to these NSA programs and how they affected Facebook and Facebook users but he is also trying to get even more transparency along with some of his competitors in Silicone Valley and in Seattle. Do you think that Facebook users will be seeing anything different in the way that they use Facebook, do you think anything will be changed in the near future? Facebook is always evolving. Their security parameters and the menu of options you have to control the security. Some people say they do it for the better, some people they do it for the worse. So, I think you will continue to see changes made by Facebook, the interesting thing will be to see if they address the NSA programs and surveillance by any nationality or any foreign country specifically so that their users could feel more comfortable. Source: Article
