The National Security Agency's (NSA) senior lawyer said on Wednesday that some of the US's biggest tech companies knew about their widespread data collection programs.
As Motherboard notes, this news comes only a week after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called President Obama to lecture him on privacy and surveillance.
If NSA lawyer Rajesh De is to be believed, then Zuckerberg is little more than a hypocrite, as he claimed all the data collected in their PRISM program occurred with full knowledge of the companies.
The Guardian reports that De was asked at a Civil Liberties Oversight board hearing if data collection under a 2008 law were done with the “full knowledge and assistance of any company from which information is obtained.”
De replied, simply, "yes."
After whistleblower Edward Snowden broke the vast surveillance of the NSA's PRISM program last year. Large tech companies were quick to deny their knowledge of the program and attempt to reassure users of their privacy.
Their massive PR programs to counteract the damage done to their public images did result in more allowances in disclosing how much data they could release on the program's reach.
However, it seems that the tech giants have been trying to shirk all responsibility for the invasions of privacy onto the NSA, when in fact they were complicit in it all.
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