Both Google and Facebook deny either direct or “back door” access to data
Google: U.S. does not have direct or ‘back door’ access to Google data
MOUNTAIN VIEW – The U.S. government does not have either direct or “back door” access to the information Google collects on its users, Google CEO Larry Page wrote on the company’s blog Friday.
Page and Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, also wrote that they had not heard of the U.S. government’s top secret and controversial data-collecting PRISM program until Thursday, when the news of its existence broke.
In response to government requests for Google data, Google’s legal team “frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process,” Page and Drummond wrote. “Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.
Zuckerberg denies giving feds access to Facebook’s servers
Echoing comments earlier in the day by Google CEO Larry Page, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday vehemently denied published claims that the FBI and National Security Agency were given access to his company’s servers.
“I want to respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM,” Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page, referring to the government program the Washington Post said was accessing Internet company data.
“Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn’t even heard of PRISM before yesterday.”
https://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/06/07/zuckerberg-denies-giving-feds-access-to-facebooks-servers/
The fact is that this information is being collected – even if the government is not asking for it. At some point these communications companies can use the data to market products to us. If your a friend that you call a lot buys a certain car, you may get solicitations for that same model. Security or marketing, we are being stalked.
Big data rules. Ask why your phone and email records are being stored in the first place.