Google chief Larry Page and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg condemned online spying Friday and called for governments to be more revealing about snooping on the Internet.
“We understand that the US and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety — including sometimes by using surveillance,” Google chief and co-founder Larry Page said in a blog post.
“But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.”
Page put his personal stamp on the California-based Internet giant’s denial that it allowed US intelligence agencies to mine data from its servers.
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg did likewise in a statement posted online later in the day.
“Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers,” he said.
Google, Facebook and other technology firms have vehemently denied that they knowingly took part in a secret program called PRISM that gave the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI backdoors into servers.
