Pre-Snowden, tech firms and NSA were buddies, emails disclose — RT USA
Pre-Snowden, tech firms and NSA were buddies, emails disclose — RT USA
Top officers in US tech firms and the National Security Agency had
cozy a relationship and held regular meetings before Edward Snowden’s
leaks exposed both sides to public criticism, disclosed email exchanges
indicate.
The email communications between NSA director Gen. Keith
Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt were
made public by Al Jazeera America, which
obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act. The
communication refers to events prior to Snowden's disclosures of
mass electronic surveillance by the NSA, which forced tech
industry captains, including Schmidt, to distance themselves from
the agency and express outrage over the practice.
The emails disclosed so far provide no evidence that tech firms
willingly participated in NSA bulk collection of personal data.
But they indicate a much closer relationship between the American
intelligence community and tech firms than implied by Silicon
Valley's reaction to Snowden's exposure, Al Jazeera said.
One of the events mentioned in the correspondence was a secret
briefing on a government initiative called the Enduring Security
Framework (ESF). The initiative was launched with participation
of the Pentagon, the Homeland Security Agency and “18 US CEOs” in
2009 to “coordinate government/industry actions on important
(generally classified) security issues that couldn’t be solved by
individual actors alone,” Alexander wrote.
