Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has posted (on Facebook, duh) a public note and open letter to users of his site, criticizing American President Barack Obama, the U.S. government, and the National Security Agency (NSA).
(In 2013, NSA contractor/whistleblower Edward Snowden released thousands of classified documents to media outlets, alleging Internet spying by the American government, as well as a global surveillance program from governments in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.)
Zuckerberg posted the following note to his personal (but very public) page on Thursday. It currently has over 131,000 Likes and over 16,200 shares.
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.
Zuckerberg has over 26 million followers on his Facebook page.