When US government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many co-operated at least a bit.
Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. In some cases, they changed their computer systems to do so.
The negotiations shed a light on how Internet companies, increasingly at the center of people’s personal lives, interact with the spy agencies that look to their vast trove of information - emails, videos, online chats, photos and search queries - for intelligence. They illustrate how intricately the US government and tech companies work together, and the depth of their behind-the-scenes transactions.
The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Apple and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence.
In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.
The negotiations have continued in recent months, as Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel. Though the official purpose of those meetings was to discuss the future of the Internet, the conversations also touched on how the companies would collaborate with the government in its intelligence gathering efforts, said a person who attended.
While handing over data in response to a FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so. Details on the discussions help explain the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program and the companies’ responses. Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line between giving the government wholesale access to their servers to collect user data and giving them specific data in response to individual court orders. Each said it did not provide the government with full, indiscriminate access to its servers.
They said they do, however, comply with individual court orders, including under FISA. The negotiations, and the technical systems for sharing data with the government, fit in that category, because they involve access to data under individual FISA requests. And in some cases, the data is transmitted to the government electronically, using a company’s servers.
"The US government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers," Google's chief executive, Larry Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement issued on Friday. "We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law."
Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the same distinction. But instead of a back door to the company servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.
The data shared in these ways is information companies are legally obligated to supply under FISA, the people said, and is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data. Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company.
FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said. There were 1,856 such requests last year, an increase of 6 percent from the year before.
In one recent instance, the National Security Agency used a FISA order to send an agent to a tech company's headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, according to a lawyer representing the company. The agent installed government-developed software on the company's server and remained on site for several weeks to download data to an agency laptop.
In other instances, the lawyer said, the NSA seeks real-time transmission of data, which companies digitally transmit to the agency. Twitter spokesmen did not respond to questions about the government requests, but said in general about the company’s philosophy toward information requests: Users “have a right to fight invalid government requests, and we stand with them in that fight.”
Twitter, along with Google and other companies, have typically fought aggressively against government requests they believe reach too far. Google, Microsoft and Twitter publish transparency reports detailing government requests for information, but these reports do not include FISA requests because they are not allowed to acknowledge them.
Yet since tech companies’ cooperation with the government was revealed Thursday, tech executives have been performing a familiar dance, expressing outrage at the extent of the government’s power to access personal data and calling for more transparency, while at the same time heaping praise upon the president as he visited Silicon Valley.
Even as the White House scrambled to defend its online surveillance, president Barack Obama was mingling with donors at the Silicon Valley home of Mike McCue, Flipboard's chief executive, eating dinner at the opulent home of Vinod Khosla, the venture capitalist, and cracking jokes about Khosla's big, shaggy dogs.
On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, posted on Facebook a call for more government transparency. "It's the only way to protect everyone's civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term," he wrote.
NYT