Google's Eric Schmidt: I Had No Knowledge The NSA Was Looking At Our Data

[Indi Guy]

Source: Business Insider

Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has insisted he had no knowledge of the US National Security Agency's tapping of the company's data, despite having a sufficiently high security clearance to have been told.

He said that he and other members of the search company were "literally outraged" by the tapping by the NSA and the UK's GCHQ – first revealed in the Guardian in June – and that "we've complained at great length" to the US government over the intrusion. Google has since begun encrypting internal traffic to prevent further spying, he said.

Speaking in a private session at the Guardian, Schmidt, 58, said:

"I have the necessary clearances to have been told, as do other executives in the company, but none of us were briefed. Had we been briefed, we probably couldn't have acted on it, because we'd have known about it. I've declined briefings [from the US government] about this because I don't want to be constrained."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-denies-knowledge-nsa-2014-1

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[jmowreader]

1. "They can't do that to our customers. Only we can do that to our customers."

[TroglodyteScholar]

3. Difference is that Google has contracts with their customers...

...in the form of EULAs that actually lay out the terms of the relationship. Love them or hate them, it's more justification for broad snooping than the NSA has.

[jmowreader]

5. Really.

Go to their search engine and search for five to ten closely-related things within the space of...oh, an hour or so, or use Google Maps to look up a handful of related businesses. All the web sites that use Google ad services will show you ads related to your searching for the next two weeks.

[TroglodyteScholar]

8. And if you care as much as you seem to

There's a link right there that says "Privacy & Terms," and its all laid out for you.

Too difficult for someone who cares so much? NSA isn't even giving us that to work with, and that was the point that you so intentionally missed.

[2banon]

2. Yeah.. uh huh.

[joe1973]

4. good article about Obama's plans to reform the NSA

Here is the link http://www.thedemocratictruth.com/pres-obama/intelligence-expert-obamas-nsa-reform-promises-are-the-first-step/

[OnyxCollie]

7. From your link:

As the president stated during the press conference, he doesn’t believe that workers at the NSA broke protocol when collecting data for surveillance purposes, or “abused authorities in order to listen to [people’s] private phone calls or read [people’s] emails.”

And he certainly doesn’t believe that agencies should be disbanded completely, because if another 9/11 or cyber attack were to happen, the NSA “will be asked by Congress and the media why they failed to connect the dots.”

Joseph Wippl, director of graduate studies at Boston University’s Department of International Relations, and a former CIA operations officer, agreed.

“It’s a political issue and the president is trying to find the middle way. If there is some kind of terrorist attack against Americans—and there almost certainly will be in the next years ahead—they don’t want to say ‘we reduced our capabilities to monitor these people, and didn’t know about it,’” he said.

...

The NSA did such a good job stopping the Boston Marathon bombing, even with all the warnings.

[JDPriestly]

10. They should focus on monitoring terrorists and leave other people alone. That would be more

efficient, more economical and then they would be able to get warrants in their investigations and -- can you believe it -- actually comply with the CONSTITUTION. Wouldn't that be something?

[onehandle]

6. He was too busy selling his 'free' users information to foreign spammers and hackers.

If you use Google or Android, you are the product.

[jakeXT]

9. And we never got seed money from the NSA, never I tell you....honestly

[blkmusclmachine]

11. Don't believe it.

[Amonester]

12. www.startpage.com sheilds you in part from that snaky thief...

https://startpage.com/eng/

sends your searches to goo gle, receives results, formats them, then sends them back to you

all that thief sees is startpage's IP, startpage searches, not yours

[Jesus Malverde]

13. .