Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program
Connie Zhou/Google, via Associated Press
A Google data center in
Council Bluffs, Iowa. Google says it scrutinizes each government request
and notifies users if it is allowed.
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Published: June 7, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — When government officials came to Silicon Valley to
demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn
over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies
bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.
Twitter
declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were
more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They
opened discussions with national security officials about developing
technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal
data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. And in
some cases, they changed their computer systems to do so.
The negotiations shed a light on how Internet companies, increasingly at
the center of people’s personal lives, interact with the spy agencies
that look to their vast trove of information — e-mails, videos, online
chats, photos and search queries — for intelligence. They illustrate how
intricately the government and tech companies work together, and the
depth of their behind-the-scenes transactions.
The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple;
and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions.
The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity
because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA
requests or even acknowledging their existence.
In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans
discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version
of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified
information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online
rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and
the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions
said.
The negotiations have continued in recent months, as Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel.
Though the official purpose of those meetings was to discuss the future
of the Internet, the conversations also touched on how the companies
would collaborate with the government in its intelligence-gathering
efforts, said a person who attended.
While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a
legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the
information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so.
Details on the discussions help explain the disparity between initial
descriptions of the government program and the companies’ responses.
Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government
program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a
bright line between giving the government wholesale access to its
servers to collect user data and giving them specific data in response
to individual court orders. Each said it did not provide the government
with full, indiscriminate access to its servers.
The companies said they do, however, comply with individual court
orders, including under FISA. The negotiations, and the technical
systems for sharing data with the government, fit in that category
because they involve access to data under individual FISA requests. And
in some cases, the data is transmitted to the government electronically,
using a company’s servers.
“The U.S. government does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the
information stored in our data centers,” Google’s chief executive,
Larry Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement on Friday. “We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law.”
Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the same distinction.
But instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were
essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the
key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance,
built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they
said.
The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company
lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It
is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have
full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure
and efficient way to hand over the data.
Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of
cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job
it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the
details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national
security clearance, according to both a former senior government
official and a lawyer representing a technology company.
FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad
sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who
work with the orders said. There were 1,856 such requests last year, an
increase of 6 percent from the year before.
In one recent instance, the National Security Agency
sent an agent to a tech company’s headquarters to monitor a suspect in a
cyberattack, a lawyer representing the company said. The agent
installed government-developed software on the company’s server and
remained at the site for several weeks to download data to an agency
laptop.
In other instances, the lawyer said, the agency seeks real-time transmission of data, which companies send digitally.
Twitter spokesmen did not respond to questions about the government
requests, but said in general of the company’s philosophy toward
information requests: Users “have a right to fight invalid government
requests, and we stand with them in that fight.”
Twitter, Google and other companies have typically fought aggressively against requests they believe reach too far. Google, Microsoft and Twitter
publish transparency reports detailing government requests for
information, but these reports do not include FISA requests because they
are not allowed to acknowledge them.
Yet since tech companies’ cooperation with the government was revealed
Thursday, tech executives have been performing a familiar dance,
expressing outrage at the extent of the government’s power to access
personal data and calling for more transparency, while at the same time
heaping praise upon the president as he visited Silicon Valley.
Even as the White House scrambled to defend its online surveillance,
President Obama was mingling with donors at the Silicon Valley home of
Mike McCue, Flipboard’s chief, eating dinner at the opulent home of
Vinod Khosla, the venture capitalist, and cracking jokes about Mr.
Khosla’s big, shaggy dogs.
On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, posted
on Facebook a call for more government transparency. “It’s the only way
to protect everyone’s civil liberties and create the safe and free
society we all want over the long term,” he wrote.
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