In a hearing that could have significant bearing on the future of the EU-US Safe Harbor agreement, European Commission attorney Bernhard Schima as good as admitted that the current agreement was not fit for purpose, telling attorney-general Yves Bot: Schima’s remark came during a case brought by Austrian law student Max Schrems following complaints filed against Facebook and four other US companies – Apple, Microsoft, Skype, and Yahoo – with the relevant data protection authorities in Ireland, Luxembourg and Germany. Here are a few reasons why Facebook has been linked with NSA and snooping on its users
In his leaks, NSA contractor, Edward Snowden had revealed details about NSA’s notorious PRISM surveillance program had provided NSA with unlimited access to a number of US tech companies and social media services, including Facebook. On one hand Facebook, Apple and Google have argued they had no idea the NSA was illegally snooping on customer data while, last year, Rajesh De, the NSA’s general counsel had categorically stated that all the tech companies knew about this practice. In 2009, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg himself made a shocking assertion that Facebook is in essence a platform for harvesting data and conducting surveillance.
Zuckerberg told an audience at the 2009 Crunchies Awards ceremony that “People have really gotten comfortable sharing more information and different kinds,” Zuckerberg added that “sharing” data — that is, surrendering private data to the government and corporations — has become the “social norm.” Zuckerberg’s statement at that time had caused quite a stir among cyber fraternity. In 2007, Matt Greenop had documented Facebook’s funding and the investors who seemed quite closed to the surveillance agencies.
Facebook’s first round of venture capital funding of $500,000 came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Thiel has been on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC. The second round of funding into Facebook of around $US12.7 million came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in “data mining technologies”.
Considering the above facts and the EU advisory it is not far from truth that Facebook seems to have some sort of working relationship with the United States National Security Agency and CIA.
