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Emails reveal close relationship between Google, NSA

Iran Press TV

Thu May 8, 2014 10:13AM GMT

The US National Security Agency and Google have had a far closer relationship than previously believed, Al Jazeera America reported, citing email exchanges between the agency's officials and Google executives.

A series of emails obtained by the news channel and published on Tuesday show that NSA director Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt had a much cozier working relationship than was implied by Silicon Valley brass.

Last year's disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency's widespread 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 pressured by law.

But Al Jazeera has obtained two sets of email communications dating from 2011 and 2012 that suggest not all cooperation was carried out under pressure. The emails were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

One of the two email chains describes a meeting between the NSA director and Google executives near an airport in San Jose, Calif.

'When we reach this point in our projects we schedule a classified briefing for the CEO's of key companies to provide them a brief on the specific threats we believe can be mitigated and to seek their commitment for their organization to move ahead,' Alexander wrote in June 2012 email to Schmidt.

'Google's participation in refinement, engineering and deployment of the solutions will be essential," Alexander wrote. When Schmidt wasn't able to attend, he enthusiastically responded, 'Would love to see you another time. Thank you!'

Schmidt publicly stated in November that if the government does have access to the company's servers, Google does not know about it.

The disclosed emails don't directly contradict that claim by Google but suggest a cozier relationship between Silicon Valley and the government than the public should be comfortable with.

AHT/ARA