14 DAY TRIAL // It's safe to assume that Google, Yahoo, and others know more about the NSA spying than they're letting us know. We don't even have to assume, as we know for a fact that the companies are prevented from revealing the type and number of user data requests they get from the NSA.
But it looks like the spy agency is still able to surprise the companies. When told about how the NSA spies on data center communications, two Google engineers "exploded in profanity," the Washington Post reported.
Needless to say, neither Google nor Yahoo is happy about the revelations and we can assume that both companies feel betrayed by the spy agency. That's particularly true since both already work with the NSA to provide user data.
In fact, regardless of whether the public story the companies keep feeding us, that they only comply with lawful and limited requests, is true or not, the fact that the NSA went behind their back hurts.
“We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links, especially the links in the slide,” Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond told the Washington Post.
“We do not provide any government, including the U.S. government, with access to our systems. We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform,” he added.
Yahoo had even less to say, basically issuing a non-statement about how it doesn't provide the NSA with direct backend access and that it protects its data centers.
“We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency,” Yahoo commented.