O dia de hoje certamente marca um momento diferente na trajetória da rede mundial de computadores que até ontem dispunha de uma imagem (falsa agora sabemos todos) de inviolabilidade por parte de ações de governos ditos democráticos. Com a revelação feita simultaneamente pelos jornais "The Guardian" e "Washington Post" agora o mundo sabe que a National Security Agency dos EUA tem tido acesso irrestrito aos dados de usuários de gigantes como Google, Yahoo e Apple.
Agora que aquilo que até ontem era obra de criadores de conspirações surreais, hoje se sabe que é verdade. Aliás, eu fico imagino que a estas alturas o livro "Cyberpunks" de Julian Assange do Wikileaks deve estar tendo a sua procura aumentada, pois essa era um dos avisos que foram incluídos na obra.
Mas outra coisa esperável aconteceu ao longo desta 6a. feira, que foi a negativa dos dirigentes de empresas como a Google acerca do acesso ilimitado aos dados de seus usuários que teria sido dado à NSA estadunidense. A matéria abaixo, publicada pelo site mashable.com, apresenta a negativa de Larry Page, diretor executivo da Google, acerca da revelação que sua empresa está entregando dados sigilosos para a agência de espionagem norte-americana.
Será que alguém vai acreditar nessa negativa de Page?
Larry Page: Google Has Nothing to Do With Prism
BY LORENZO FRANCESCHI-BICCHIERA
Did tech giants like Google, Facebook or Apple really give the NSA unfettered access to their user's data? On Thursday, almost all of them denied that. On Friday, Google's CEO Larry Page came forward to clarify and reiterate that Google has nothing to do with the newly revealed secret surveillance program PRISM.
In a blog post published on Friday, Page started off by saying that he wants to give users "the facts."
"First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government — or any other government — direct access to our servers," he said. "Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers." As Apple did, Page claimed Google had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday."
Prism, as we exlained in our FAQ, allegedly gives the NSA direct, real-time access to user's data on Internet services provided by Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo, among others. It is not clear exactly how it works, and a lot of details about it are still murky.
The fact that Google denied that they provided a backdoor "doesn't rule out an API," tweeted Christopher Soghoian, a surveillance expert at the American Civil Liberties Union. Application Programming Interfaces specify the way software interacts with each other. Privacy experts have speculated that tech companies might have provided the NSA with an API that allows them to access user's data. This is one of the uncorroborated theories explaining how PRISM works.
Page then added what Google already said yesterday, that they only comply with lawful request, and that they are very careful about it. "Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process," he wrote.
To clear all doubts, Page even went as far as to say that "press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period ... Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false. "
At the same time, in a statement titled "Fact Check," Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan also confirmed his company's stance from yesterday.
"We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers," he wrote.
Image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
