Sorry, Barrack, but Zuck is not impressed with your snooping… and he’ll tell you so. The social network founder and CEO is trying to stop the smirks that arise when “Facebook” and “privacy” are mentioned in the same sentence — and he’s taken his concerns to the President of the United States.
No ad to show here.
In (what else?) a Facebook post, Zuckerberg explained that he’d shared his unhappiness about the level of government spying with Obama. “I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform,” he wrote. “So it’s up to us — all of us — to build the internet we want.”
Zuckerberg further went on to explain that Facebook is very concerned with privacy and security, and (like other major web companies), tries to boost the safety of its service through two factor authentication, encrypted communication and secure protocols. “This is why I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behaviour of the US government,” Zuckerberg says. “When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.” Ouch.
Zuckerberg’s comments come after a wave of concerns over the level of sanctioned snooping conducted by the US’ National Security Agency, whose activities were brought to light by whistle-blower Edward Snowden back in June last year. Since then, a number of major tech organisations (many of whom were implicated in the leaks) have rallied together to call for reforms in government surveillance in a bid to get authorities to stop spying on their users.
When the coalition launched late last year, Zuckerberg said the US government “should take this opportunity to lead this reform effort and make things right.” He echoed this sentiment in his latest post, saying the “government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.”
