Technology Industry Responds to Surveillance Plan

Technology companies including Google, Facebook and Yahoo said the reforms to the National Security Agency surveillance that President Barack Obama proposed “represent positive progress” but did not go far enough to curb the vast program.

“Overall, the strategy seems to be to leave current intelligence processes largely intact and improve oversight to a degree,” wrote Alex Fowler and Chris Riley, top executives at Mozilla. “We’d hoped for, and the Internet deserves, more. Without a meaningful change of course, the Internet will continue on its path toward a world of balkanization and distrust, a grave departure from its origins of openness and opportunity.” “Do these reforms really answer and respond to the totality of the problem and the need?” asked Ed Black, head of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents Google, Yahoo and other companies. “I reluctantly have to say it’s not sufficient.”

“The commitments outlined by President Obama represent positive progress on key issues including transparency from the government and in what companies will be allowed to disclose, extending privacy protections to non-US citizens, and FISA court reform,” AOL, Apple, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo said in a joint statement. But, they added, “Crucial details remain to be addressed on these issues, and additional steps are needed on other important issues, so we’ll continue to work with the administration and Congress to keep the momentum going and advocate for reforms consistent with the principles we outlined in December.”

Telecommunications firms said they were pleased about limits to the collection of bulk metadata, but said they have unanswered questions on details of reforms, particularly on changes to the phones records database. The database, President Obama said, would be removed from government control to a third party. Phone companies don't want to have the responsibility of keeping the database, they said. CTIA-The Wireless Association, stressed that it believes privacy and security “can be achieved without the imposition of data retention mandates that obligate carriers to keep customer information any longer than necessary for legitimate business purposes.”

"The public needs to understand that it's a moving target given the rapid pace at which technology is developing," says Stephen Cobb, senior researcher at antivirus vendor ESET. "The President likely failed to satisfy some people on different sides of the debate and that might be an indication he is taking the right steps, walking a fine line between competing ideals and incompatible practical concerns. The bottom line in terms of public concern is that the problem is out in the open and there is a willingness to make changes."