For a few months now the CIA, a United States intelligence agency, has possessed private data from its European users. And not because it obtained the information from a special source within Europe, but through a much stronger resource: the internet.
Google is the first company to admit that it sent the CIA confidential user information in order to comply with regulations enforced in the United States.
The information was sent to the CIA as well as the NSA (National Security Agency). A spokesperson from Google in Germany was the first person to admit the release, noting that any company headquartered in the United States should provide information for the US government should they need it.
Addressing questions posed by elEconomista, the search engine provided another communication in which it also admitted that ?like all companies who respect and follow the law, Google always complies with requests for information that are lawfully valid.?
Still, the company insists that ?we are taking the privacy of our users very seriously, and every time we receive an official request, the first thing that we do before we comply is to make sure we following the law.?
In this sense, and to improve transparency, during the past year the search engine launched its Transparency Report, which shows the total number and kind of user information requests made by governments.
The underlying problem relates to the USA Patriot Act, which has eased restrictions on gathering information from foreign countries and organizations. The act requires companies to provide any kind of information that the US government might need, even though doing so might break the law of territory in which the company operates. The EU still has not pronounced plans to no longer comply with this act, but chances are high that it will, adopting measures for safeguarding the best interests of its citizens in accord with European laws that protect private user information.
