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Big Tech Says Spy Bill Turns Its Workers Into Informants
One of Silicon Valley's most influential lobbying arms joins privacy reformers in a fight against the Biden administration-backed expansion of a major US surveillance program.
A trade organization representing some of the world’s largest information technology companies—Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft among them—say its members are voicing strong opposition to ongoing efforts by the Biden administration to dramatically expand a key US government surveillance authority. An email circulated to House members in February by Michael Calcagni, the intel committee’s deputy staff director, for instance, informed lawmakers that the “collection gap” was both “serious and dangerous” and that “contrary to unsubstantiated assertions, it would not authorize or enable the Government to conduct surveillance of any American who connects to public WiFi at a Starbucks or McDonalds.” Should it become apparent to the world that America’s top IT companies—data centers, cloud providers, and security services alike—have been turned into a watering hole for the US intelligence community, many customers will “likely look to foreign competitors,” Miller says, companies whose technologies are viewed less exposed to clandestine government requests.
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