Open Letter to Obama and Congress From Internet Giants Calls For Reining In Government Surveillance

Today, eight leading internet companies
have published in several major newspapers an open letter to President
Barack Obama and to Members of Congress urging them to rein in
the growth of the national security surveillance state. From the
letter:

We understand that governments have a duty to protect their
citizens. But this summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need
to reform government surveillance practices worldwide. The balance
in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away
from the rights of the individual — rights that are enshrined in
our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It’s
time for a change.

For our part, we are focused on keeping users’ data secure —
deploying the latest encryption technology to prevent unauthorized
surveillance on our networks and by pushing back on government
requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope.

We urge the US to take the lead and make reforms that ensure
that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law,
proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent
oversight.

The companies behind the letter are AOL, Apple, Facebook,
Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo. They set out a
list of five principles at the ReformGovernmentSurveillance.com
website including (1) no bulk collection of user data; (2)
independent judicial review of intelligence agency demands, (3)
transparent reports on what is being compelled; (4) no country
firewalls against cross border data; and (5) a mutual legal
assistance treaty (MLAT) among countries to prevent conflicts.

Given the attitudes of authoritarian governments with respect to
the internet privacy of their citizens, a comprehensive MLAT that
also protects the constitutioinal rights of American citizens to be
free from government surveillance might be difficult to negotiate.
Or sadly, given the Edward
Snowden revelations about the extent of National Security
Agency spying, perhaps not that difficult after all. 

Privacy violations mean something very different when companies
collect collect vast amounts of customer data in order to target
ads and services (as annoying as that may be to some users) than
when governments collect the similar information in order to
monitor the activities of their citizens. The government gaze is a
lot more threatening to liberty than is the Google gaze.