Zuckerberg: How the US Government blew it on 'online spying'
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has flayed the U.S. government for doing a poor job of explaining the online spying efforts of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Techcrunch: Zuckerberg hits out
"Frankly I think the government blew it," Zuckerberg said during an onstage interview at the tech industry conference Disrupt in San Francisco. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and other tech executives also expressed frustration in person since a series of news leaks revealed the government's controversial surveillance programmes, reported Silicon Valley.com,.
"It's our government's job to protect all of us and also protect our freedoms and protect the economy, and companies," Zuckerberg told interviewer Michael Arrington, "and I think they did a bad job of balancing those things."
He went on to say: "They blew it on communicating the balance of what they were going for" and that failure had hurt Silicon Valley companies.
A series of news reports have suggested U.S. intelligence agencies gained access to the online activities and communications involving users of Facebook and other popular services.
Some of those reports have suggested that unnamed companies have cooperated with the U.S. efforts, although the details are unclear.
Analysts say those reports could hurt the companies financially, especially overseas, if consumers and business customers believe their sensitive information isn't safe from government prying.
Facebook - along with Google , Yahoo and other tech giants insists it doesn't give the government free rein to tap into its servers.
But the companies also say they comply with legal requests to turn over user information. But national security rules prohibitIng them from discussing the details of their actions. bug them
Mayer, interviewed earlier, said she was proud of her company for waging an early, unsuccessful court battle against government requests for Internet user data. This was before her time at Yahoo.
But she said of those battles, "When you lose and you don't comply, it's treason."
Mayer sympathised with government efforts to defend against terrorism -- agreeing with PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, who had said intelligence workers deserve respect for trying to keep the country safe.
Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have filed lawsuits this week seeking permission to disclose the number and nature of the user data requests they receive from U.S. intelligence agencies.
Zuckerberg said the numbers would show that Facebook has only provided information about a tiny number of the social network's 1.1 billion users worldwide. But he complained that the government has not explained its efforts clearly.
It didn't help the interests of U.S. companies in overseas markets, Zuckerberg said , when the government said, "Don't worry, we're not spying on Americans." He added , "Oh wonderful. That's really helpful" for companies that do business around the world. I think that was really bad."