14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Zuckerberg really doesn’t like how the US government and the NSA handled the leaks this summer.
Present at the TechCrunch conference in San Francisco, Zuckerberg said the authorities really “blew it” when it comes to communicating with the media and the world during the entire scandal.
“I think they did a bad job balancing those things here. Frankly, I think the government blew it – communicating the balance of what they were going for here with this,” the Facebook CEO said.
Zuckerberg makes some good points while discussing the matter.
“The morning after this started breaking, a bunch of people were asking them what they thought. They said don’t worry, we’re not spying any Americans. Wonderful! That’s really helpful for companies trying to work with people around the world. Thanks for going out there and being clear. I think that was really bad,” the Facebook founder said.
Zuckerberg is referring to statements made by both the intelligence higher-ups, but also by president Barack Obama. In an effort to reassure US citizens that the NSA wasn’t engaging in any domestic spying, they said that American citizens or those living on US soil were not targeted by such activities.
Of course, this brought on international backlash since it meant the US didn’t really care that everyone else could become a target of the NSA.
Over the past three months, however, it was revealed that the NSA had indeed also been spying on Americans, including those the FISA court didn’t include on the so-called “Alert List.”
Facebook has joined several other tech giants in an effort to get the government to increase transparency about the surveillance programs. It has also published a report revealing how many data requests it got from government entities in the first six months of the year.