Rep Rogers lashes out at tech firms on surveillance stance

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) tore into major US tech firms for their opposition to a House surveillance reform bill that many Internet industry leaders have denounced as too weak.

"We should be very mad at Google, Facebook and Microsoft, because they're doing a very dangerous thing," Rep Rogers said.

The House intelligence chairman charged that by opposing the House version of the USA Freedom Act and calling for more limits on surveillance the American firms are putting their profits ahead of their loyalty to the United States.

"They say, 'Well, we have to do this because we're trying to make sure we don’t lose our European business.' I don't know about the rest of you but that offends me form the words 'European business,'" Rep Rogers said. "Everyone on those boards should be embarrassed and their CEOs should be embarrassed and their stockholders should be embarrassed.....That one quarter [of European market profits] cannot be worth the national security of the United States for the next ten generations."