The Major Tech Companies Missing From the Surveillance Reform Letter

Eight major American tech giants have teamed up for a government surveillance reform campaign, decrying the National Security Agency’s sweeping power and demanding the end of bulk data collection in a letter to President Barack Obama and lawmakers. But missing are a few Silicon Valley companies ignoring the possible damage done by leaks from NSA former contractor Edward Snowden.

Most notably, online retail giant Amazon and marketplace eBay were not among the tech signatories. Hardware-driven companies like Oracle, Cisco Systems, Intel and HP were also absent. So where is the rest of Silicon Valley? Perhaps the public denouncement strategy is most beneficial to consumer-facing entities -- of which Amazon is part of -- that offer services to a broad swath of the public. Amazon’s cloud technology and web services make it an equally important player in the internet ecosystem and a tempting target for the NSA. Meanwhile, telecom companies like AT&T, Verizon and Level 3 remain sharply divided on the privacy values in Silicon Valley. Telecom companies have the least incentive to complain, enjoying multi-million dollar government contracts annually.