As per a report published on Al-Jazeera’s America network website, certain new e-mails have revealed that the search giant has been working far closely with NSA than what silicon valley had clarified previous year.
In a report published today, Al-Jazeera has stated,
Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency’s vast capability for spying on Americans’ electronic communications prompted a number of tech executives whose firms cooperated with the government to insist they had done so only when compelled by a court of law.
But Al Jazeera has obtained two sets of email communications dating from a year before Snowden became a household name that suggest not all cooperation was under pressure.
Last year, many spying techniques of the NSA, which included coordination with comapnies like Google, were revealed. Silicon Valley had then clarified, with companies such as Facebook making public, the no. of request theu had received from various Governments.
As per the e-mails with Al-Jazeera, on the morning of June 28, 2012, an email from Alexander invited Schmidt to attend a four-hour-long “classified threat briefing” on Aug. 8 at a “secure facility in proximity to the San Jose, CA airport.”
“The meeting discussion will be topic-specific, and decision-oriented, with a focus on Mobility Threats and Security,” Alexander wrote in the email, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the first of dozens of communications between the NSA chief and Silicon Valley executives that the agency plans to turn over.
Alexander, Schmidt and other industry executives met earlier in the month, according to the email. But Alexander wanted another meeting with Schmidt and “a small group of CEOs” later that summer because the government needed Silicon Valley’s help.
These classified briefings which Gen.Alexander is talking about, refers to a special security framework by the government, named as ESF (Enduring Security Framework). Alexander specifically outlined the importance of Google, by saying, “Google’s participation in refinement, engineering and deployment of the solutions will be essential.“
Startling fact revealed about these ESFs is that Gen. Alexander has mentioned the involvement of 18 U.S. CEO’s in the launching of ESF in the year 2009.
More information on this revelation and the complete E-mails can be accessed here.
