The response from Google - and my response to them

 

Here is the response by Google:

"My own privacy policy on all my websites, for all the  services I provide stipulates this and has done so for many years, ever since I wrote it:

We take precautions to maintain both the security and the confidentiality of the information we collect from you.

However if we are legally compelled to disclose any of the collected information by court order, intervention of a law enforcement agency or other similarly empowered entity or legal mechanism, they in turn are empowered to obtain further identifiable information from the ISP's that are involved. In addition, we reserve the right to initiate legal proceedings against any disruptive visitor when we believe it is necessary to protect our service, site or members."


And here is my response to that response:

"Thanks for your response! The problem with your argument is that US law is not valid for non-US territory. In most parts of the democratic world we don´t think it is OK for foreign governments to spy on us. It does not matter if it is the US, Cuba, Russia, Iran or any other country that regularly uses surveillance to detect what they believe are potential enemies to their states. And it does not matter to us what their national laws say they can do.

What you have done could possibly have been legal, even if unacceptable to many, if you had restricted the surveillance to US citizens. But when you assisted NSA in doing so outside the US you should have understood that this in conflict with many of the national laws in the countries where the surveillance you assisted was performed. You should therefore not be surprised by neither the international criticism or the weakened confidence from your non-US users that your behaviour has generated.

Google is an international actor. Should you not then respect the laws in the different countries where you operate? How can you imagine that people in these countries would think they should be governed by laws from countries they don´t belong to?

Then we have international legislation to consider. I think most experts would agree that the US has violated international legislation by surveilling citizens in other countries without permission from their governments. By assisting NSA, you would also be guilty on such grounds. There is no way you can hide behind domestic laws in the US just because you head office is in the US. Not for operations in other countries.

This is why I think your behaviour can be criticized both on legal and moral grounds. You have let your international users down. From my personal point of view, I feel you have betrayed the confidence I put in you, and all those promises you made to protect my privacy, when I agreed to create my Google account."

If you have anything to say directly to Google in this discussion, go to:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/?hl=sv#!mydiscussions/webmasters/3i4k5pFFmAk

NSA espionage with the help of Google

Det här brevet skrev jag i dag till Google:
Today I wrote this letter to Google:

According to news reports Google was one of the companies that leaked information from users accounts, such as contents of e-mails and communication patterns, to US National Security Agency (NSA), a governmental espionage organization. I have not received any explanation, or if true, any excuse or compensation for this violation of the promises made to me when I created my Google account. I don´t want strangers to collect information about what I say to whom. (Do you?) My understanding when I created my account was that you would respect my privacy. 

There are many countries, and have been in history, that have used wide spread espionage against their own citizens to identify and punish "enemies of the state". The most well-known is perhaps what STASI did in the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) under Honecker, but the proportion of their espionage was nothing in comparison to what the NSA has been doing. By all criteria it should be defined as an international crime, a violation of human rights and anti-democratic. If the US wants to do that against their own citizens, it would be bad enough. But when they think they have the right to monitor the activities of ordinary people in other countries, including Sweden and the rest of Europe, by demanding access to the contents of their e-mail, and who has written to whom, it is in my eyes totally unacceptable. If you agree this is a crime and a violation of international regulations, and if you have assisted NSA in these activities, are you not as guilty as they are? And what about the promises of privacy you made when I signed up to trust Google?

Yes, I have seen that you now have changed the conditions in retrospect (end of June this year) to include demands from governments as a justification to violate our privacy. But during all these years when you cooperated with NSA to give them access to information about our accounts? Did you have this paragraph then?

I think in any case you should be ashamed of what you have been doing and I expect an explanation and an apology at least. 

I also encourage everybody to choose Internet providers that we can trust respect our privacy and that don´t cooperate with paranoid governments by letting them monitor our activities the way you seem to have done. Correct me if I am wrong.

Regards

Krister Håkansson