We need to make it clear to other countries that our technology companies are not part of our government.
— Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state, in comments about the Edward Snowden leaks during a speech at a tech industry conference Thursday in San Francisco. As we ve written, the tech industry has had to face challenges at home and abroad over the perception that it s helping governments spy on Internet users — including through programs such as Prism. Companies such as Google have strongly denied they are voluntarily cooperating with spying, saying they re giving up information only when legally compelled to do so. Tech CEOs such as Cisco s John Chambers have complained about the reports based on the Snowden leaks, as our own Michelle Quinn wrote about recently: We simply cannot operate this way, our customers trust us to be able to deliver to their doorsteps products that meet the highest standards of integrity and security, Chambers said in a letter to President Obama. Tech employees also have been frustrated, with Google engineers last year publicly hurling profanities over reports that the NSA had been intercepting Google and Yahoo traffic. And U.S. companies are reportedly feeling the squeeze; for example, Germany canceled an Internet-service contract with Verizon a couple of months ago, and smaller companies are also saying they re being affected.
Clinton also addressed the spying itself on Thursday: There s no doubt we went too far in a number of areas, she said about the increased surveillance powers the government gave itself after the 9/11 attacks.
Photo: Hillary Clinton signs her new book, Hard Choices, at the Common Good Books store in St. Paul, Minn., Sunday, July 20, 2014. (Jerry Holt/Minneapolis Star Tribune/MCT)
