Yahoo CEO ‘we faced jail if we revealed NSA surveillance secrets’

The CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer spoke at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. She was asked why tech companies had not decided to tell the public more about what the US surveillance industry was doing.

She answered with “Releasing classified information is treason and you are incarcerated'.

Both Yahoo and Facebook are fighting for the right to publish the number of requests they get from the spy agency. As of now, companies are forbidden by law to disclose how much data they provide.

Mayer added that she was “proud to be part of an organisation that from the beginning in 2007 have been sceptical of, and been scrutinizing those NSA requests.”

Zuckerberg also stepped in to make some comments on the situation, adding that the government had done ‘bad job' of balancing privacy and a duty to protect. He said ‘Frankly, I think the government blew it'.

Earlier this week executives from Yahoo, Google and Facebook and other companies met the presidents group on intelligence and communications. The meeting was called after Facebook and Yahoo filed suits to force the Fisa court to allow them to disclose more information.

Yahoo said “Yahoo has been unable to engage fully in the debate about whether government has properly used its powers, because the government has placed a prior restraint on Yahoo's speech. Yahoo's inability to respond to news reports has harmed its reputation and has undermined its business not only in the United States but worldwide. Yahoo cannot respond to such reports with mere generalities'.

Google and Microsoft also filed their own suits to force the Fisa court to disclose more information.

Kitguru says: Will the government listen and take action?

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