Electronic Frontier Foundation splits from tech companies over surveillance concerns

Recent revelations about government surveillance have begun splintering the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a group of Internet advocacy groups and tech companies dedicated to advancing human rights online. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that it was leaving GNI.

EFF said it is concerned about the group’s ability to facilitate transparent conversations with member companies -- including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo -- which are bound by secretive surveillance laws. This year’s leaks about government surveillance programs have made it “clear that affected companies are unable even to talk about secret orders they have received from the US government,” the letter said. “As a result, EFF longer no believes we can sign our name onto joint statements that rely on shared knowledge of the security of company products or their internal processes.”