government

Google says it's facing a rapidly increasing number of data requests from national governments, and particularly the United States government. At the same time, the firm says it still hasn't made any headway in its fight to show its users the ... information it's being forced to share. Google says that, in the six-month period between January and June 2013, the United States government made almost 11,000 requests for information related to Google's users. U.S. Government Makes Most Data Requests -- By Far By comparison, the government of India -- the country that made the second-most data ... (view more)

United States Secretary of State (and former presidential candidate) John Kerry says the National Security Agency went too far with its controversial surveillance programs. Kerry indicated that he and U.S. President Barack Obama were largely unaware ... of the extent of the government's surveillance activity. "The president and I have learned of some things that have been happening in many ways on an automatic pilot, because the technology is there and the ability is there," Kerry recently noted. "In some cases, some of these actions have reached too far and we are going to try to make sure it ... (view more)

A former Microsoft privacy expert says he no longer trusts the Redmond, Washington-based tech firm. The problem: Microsoft has been too willing to work with the United States' government's highly controversial National Security Agency. Speaking at a ... conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, former Microsoft Chief Privacy Adviser Casper Bowden (who was with the firm from 2002 until 2011) said "I don't trust Microsoft now." Bowden, whose work at Microsoft involved devising privacy policy for forty different countries around the world, says that Microsoft's top executives never informed him that the ... (view more)

Microsoft and Google say they really want you to know how much of your personal information they're passing on to the National Security Agency (NSA). In a bid to gain that right, the tech titans are suing the United States government. The lawsuit is ... the result of data collection by the NSA. The agency has been at the center of a media firestorm ever since whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA's surveillance programs earlier this year. Negotiations with U.S. Government Break Down Microsoft and Google want consumers to know how much information they're forced to pass on to ... (view more)

Microsoft has flatly denied claims that the National Security Agency (NSA) has direct access to Outlook email accounts. The firm is also criticizing the US government for preventing it from discussing NSA snooping with the public. Last week, several ... sources claimed Microsoft had given the National Security Agency help bypassing the encryption meant to keep its webmail services, such as Outlook.com, confidential. The same reports suggested Microsoft had allowed the NSA to intercept Skype conversations and access files stored through the SkyDrive service. (Source: pcworld.com ) Microsoft's ... (view more)

Yahoo and Apple have revealed how the US government accesses their customers' private information. It's part of an ongoing campaign by tech firms to try to avoid being tainted by the ongoing National Security Agency's PRISM scandal . Until recently ... neither Yahoo nor Apple had discussed their role in the scandal, which involves government surveillance and secretive data requests. However, both firms have now published statistics showing how many times the government demanded information about their customers. Yahoo Hit With 2,000 Data Requests A Month Yahoo says that between the beginning of ... (view more)