Pressure on Obama over taps on e-mails
Source: Agencies |
June 8, 2013, Saturday
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Print Edition
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REPORTS of sweeping US government surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet activity put the administration on the defensive yesterday, adding pressure on President Barack Obama to explain why such tactics are necessary.
The Washington Post reported late on Thursday that federal authorities had been tapping into the central servers of companies including Google, Apple and Facebook to gain access to e-mails, photos and other files allowing analysts to track a person's movements and contacts.
That added to privacy concerns sparked by a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper that the National Security Agency had been mining phone records from millions of customers of a subsidiary of Verizon Communications.
Obama, who pledged to run the most transparent administration in US history, did not mention the surveillance furor in two meetings with supporters on Thursday evening.
He may be forced to broach the subject during his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a California summit, during which US concerns about alleged Chinese hacking of American secrets are expected to be high on the agenda.
Members of the US Congress are routinely briefed by the security agency on secret surveillance programs, but it is not yet clear how much they knew about the surveillance reported by the Washington Post.
Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said he thought the administration had good intentions but that the program was "too broad an over-reach."
"I think there ought to be some connection to suspicion, otherwise we can say that any intrusion on all of our privacy is justified for the times that we will catch the few terrorists," Waxman said. "Good intentions are not enough. We need protections against government intrusion that goes too far."
The Washington Post said the surveillance program involving firms including Microsoft, Skype and YouTube, code-named PRISM and established under President George W. Bush in 2007, had seen "exponential growth" under the Obama administration.
It said the security agency increasingly relied on PRISM as a source of raw material for its intelligence reports.
The Washington Post reported late on Thursday that federal authorities had been tapping into the central servers of companies including Google, Apple and Facebook to gain access to e-mails, photos and other files allowing analysts to track a person's movements and contacts.
That added to privacy concerns sparked by a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper that the National Security Agency had been mining phone records from millions of customers of a subsidiary of Verizon Communications.
Obama, who pledged to run the most transparent administration in US history, did not mention the surveillance furor in two meetings with supporters on Thursday evening.
He may be forced to broach the subject during his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a California summit, during which US concerns about alleged Chinese hacking of American secrets are expected to be high on the agenda.
Members of the US Congress are routinely briefed by the security agency on secret surveillance programs, but it is not yet clear how much they knew about the surveillance reported by the Washington Post.
Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said he thought the administration had good intentions but that the program was "too broad an over-reach."
"I think there ought to be some connection to suspicion, otherwise we can say that any intrusion on all of our privacy is justified for the times that we will catch the few terrorists," Waxman said. "Good intentions are not enough. We need protections against government intrusion that goes too far."
The Washington Post said the surveillance program involving firms including Microsoft, Skype and YouTube, code-named PRISM and established under President George W. Bush in 2007, had seen "exponential growth" under the Obama administration.
It said the security agency increasingly relied on PRISM as a source of raw material for its intelligence reports.
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