US admits to snooping on Facebook, Google data of overseas users
WASHINGTON: The US government has been secretly collecting information on foreigners overseas for nearly six years from the nation's largest internet companies like Google, Facebook and, most recently, Apple, in search of national security threats, the director of national intelligence confirmed.
The confirmation of the classified program came just hours after government officials acknowledged a separate seven-year effort to sweep up records of telephone calls inside the United States. Together, the unfolding revelations opened a window into the growth of government surveillance that began under theBush administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has clearly been embraced and even expanded under the Obama administration.
Government officials defended the two surveillance initiatives as authorized under law, known to Congress and necessary to guard the country against terrorist threats. But an array of civil liberties advocates and libertarian conservatives said the disclosures provided the most detailed confirmation yet of what has been long suspected about what the critics call an alarming and ever-widening surveillance state.
WASHINGTON: The US government has been secretly collecting information on foreigners overseas for nearly six years from the nation's largest internet companies like Google, Facebook and, most recently, Apple, in search of national security threats, the director of national intelligence confirmed.
The confirmation of the classified program came just hours after government officials acknowledged a separate seven-year effort to sweep up records of telephone calls inside the United States. Together, the unfolding revelations opened a window into the growth of government surveillance that began under theBush administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has clearly been embraced and even expanded under the Obama administration.
Government officials defended the two surveillance initiatives as authorized under law, known to Congress and necessary to guard the country against terrorist threats. But an array of civil liberties advocates and libertarian conservatives said the disclosures provided the most detailed confirmation yet of what has been long suspected about what the critics call an alarming and ever-widening surveillance state.
In December 2005, The New York Times revealed the existence of elements of that program, setting off a debate about civil liberties and the rule of law. But in early 2007, Alberto R. Gonzales, then the attorney general, announced that after months of extensive negotiation, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had approved "innovative" and "complex" orders bringing the surveillance programs under its authority.
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