14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has called US President Barack Obama to express his frustration over government spying. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the president gave him any good news.
In a post published a few hours ago (on Facebook, of course), Zuckerberg wrote about “trust in the Internet.”
“To keep the internet strong, we need to keep it secure. That's why at Facebook we spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure. We encrypt communications, we use secure protocols for traffic, we encourage people to use multiple factors for authentication and we go out of our way to help fix issues we find in other people's services,” he wrote.
“The internet works because most people and companies do the same. We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world,” he added.
“This is why I've been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government.”
Zuckerberg points out that the government should be much more transparent about its online activities to prevent people from assuming the worst.
As far as his call to the president is concerned, Zuckerberg wrote, “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.”
The founder of Facebook says that users can count on the company to do its part in making the Internet safe and secure.
Zuckerberg’s message and his call to the president come shortly after a new report on NSA spying based on information leaked by Edward Snowden. The report has revealed that the agency often impersonates websites, including Facebook, to install malware on computers.
In the meantime, the NSA has published a statement denying accusations that it indiscriminately installs malware on millions of computers worldwide.
The intelligence agency claims to use its technical capabilities only for “lawful and appropriate foreign intelligence operations.”
As far as impersonating Facebook and other websites is concerned, the agency says, “NSA does not use its technical capabilities to impersonate U.S. company websites. Nor does NSA target any user of global Internet services without appropriate legal authority. Reports of indiscriminate computer exploitation operations are simply false.”