Internet snooping: Google says there is no back door
The US government does not have a “back door” into Google, the company’s chief legal officer told Channel 4 News. That would mean that some early reports of the spying are wrong. What do we know?
Google does not let the US government dip into its data though a “back-door”, the company’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond told Channel 4 News on Tuesday.
That would mean that the reports last week about the breadth of the surveillance are wrong. Google wants to go public with how the system works and has asked the US government if it can reveal details about how many requests were made. Facebook and Microsoft have also appealed to the government for more transparency.
Mr Drummond rebutted allegations that the US government has direct access into Google’s servers – where it stores all user information including Gmail messages, search histories and chat conversations.
“There is no direct access, there is no indirect access, there is no back door, there’s no drop box, there’s no equipment installed on our servers. Period.”
Information is handed over, said the Google legal chief, but it’s on a case-by-case basis:
“We get these requests. We treat them very seriously. We have lawyers review them. We’re willing to push back if they’re overly broad.
“When we determine that we need to comply, we deliver the information. That is to say, we typically deliver it electronically, occasionally in person – but we deliver it to them. There’s no access to our systems where the government is pulling data from us.”
Watch the interview with Google's legal chief David Drummond
Blackbox in the server
Reports from the Guardian and Washington Post last week suggested that the NSA has a direct interface into the internet companies’ servers. Speaking to Channel 4 News on Monday, Caspar Bowden, former chief privacy adviser at Microsoft discussed how the system could work based on the revelations:
“What we understand – and we have only the newspaper reports to go on – is that some kind of black box has been positioned in Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and the rest.
“The purpose of this box is to receive electronic orders from government about what sort of surveillance is to be carried out.”
“The product of these searches is then put into the box, we don’t know yet whether that’s automated. And then that box is used by the National Security Agency to receive information.”
If the Department of Defence approves Google’s request to go public about the surveillance, more will emerge about how exactly the surveillance worked.
It is not clear what the agreement is with the other companies named in the Guardian’s documents – including Apple, Facebook and Yahoo. Last week, all denied that they work with such a programme.
What the politicians know
People who know more about what is going on include the US House of Representatives who received a closed-door briefing from the NSA last night. The Agency told politicians how it works within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that governs its behaviour.
The reaction of members of Congress was mixed. Many have expressed support for the surveillance program but raised questions about whether it should be more tightly supervised and scaled back.
“In my mind, things that may have been appropriate in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the weeks and months and even years after that, may no longer be appropriate today,” Republican Representative Luke Messer of Indiana said on MSNBC.
Xavier Becerra, a Democratic Representative for California, and Chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told the Guardian that there had not been enough oversight of government surveillance programs. “We are now glimpsing the damage,” he said, referring to failures to repeal the Patriot Act sooner. “It was an extraordinary measure for an extraordinary time but it shouldn’t have been extended.”
The Senate will be briefed on Thursday. Meanwhile the journalist behind the Guardian’s story, Glenn Greenwald, has promised that there are more revelations to come.
In reply to comments from the head of National Intelligence James Clapper that the leaks were “literally gut-wrenching and a “huge, grave damage”, Greenwald tweeted: “save some melodrama and rhetoric for coming stories. You’ll need it”.
Whistleblower still in Hong-Kong
Meanwhile whistleblower Edward Snowden has given an interview in Hong Kong, the first since he broke his cover in an interview with the Guardian at the weekend.
Mr Snowden talked to the South China Morning Post on Wednesday night about US cyber attacks on China and Hong Kong. In claims unverified by the Post he said:
“We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one.”
Formerly an employee of the CIA, Mr Snowden is the source of the whole story and faces legal proceedings from the US government for leaking confidential documents. Mr Snowden will stay in Hong Kong and fight any extradition attempts from the US, he said: “My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate.” Mr Snowden also revealed that he hadn’t spoken to his family since he went public and that he was worried they were coming under pressure from the FBI.