Zuckerberg: The U.S. Government Is a Threat to Internet Security

Mark Zuckerberg has had it up to here with the United States government. The Facebook CEO took to his public profile page Thursday to express his frustrations about the way the U.S. government has handled Internet security in recent months. It's a sensitive issue for Facebook, a company under continuous scrutiny regarding privacy issues that most recently came under fire last summer when reports surfaced that Internet companies sent user information to the NSA. Zuckerberg denied the reports at the time and said that the claims were harming Facebook's reputation among its users. 

He echoed those sentiments in his post on Thursday, highlighting the company's steps to ensure web security and user privacy remain a major focus. Zuckerberg went as far as to call out the government as a security threat to his engineers' work at Facebook:

This is why I've been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government.

The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.

Zuckerberg wrote that he even called President Barack Obama to express his frustrations. "Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform," he wrote.

The motivation for the post is still unclear, but reports surfaced on Wednesday claiming that the NSA at times posed as Facebook to infect user systems with malware in order to spy on them. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment further on Zuckerberg's article, saying only that "the post speaks for itself."

As the world becomes more complex and governments everywhere struggle, trust in the internet is more important today than ever.

The internet is our shared space. It helps us connect. It spreads opportunity. It enables us to learn. It gives us a voice. It makes us stronger and safer together.

To keep the internet strong, we need to keep it secure. That's why at Facebook we spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure. We encrypt communications, we use secure protocols for traffic, we encourage people to use multiple factors for authentication and we go out of our way to help fix issues we find in other people's services.

The internet works because most people and companies do the same. We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world.

This is why I've been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government.

The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.

I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.

So it's up to us -- all of us -- to build the internet we want. Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I'm committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part.

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Milan Tomic

Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.

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