How Big Tech Companies are Using PR Techniques to Counter the Effects of NSA Scandal

Silicon Valley tech giants are not happy with the effect that their cooperation with NSA's domestic spying program is having on their reputation, and they are using classic public relations techniques to fight back.

In case you missed it Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo and a number of other tech companies were exposed in 2013 for their participation in a domestic surveillance program entitled PRISM. According to documents obtained by The Guardian through PRISM the NSA and GCHQ had direct access to emails, chats, photos, file transfers, voice and video calls and virtually any data associated with social media accounts.

Below is one slide from those documents. It's probably the most famous document from the Snowden leaks.

We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers,” said Joe Sullivan, chief security officer for Facebook. "When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law."

"We have never heard of PRISM," said Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple. "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."

Of course it was kind of hard to take their denials seriously after the U.S. government confirmed that the documents were real and sought to arrest Edward Snowden for treason.

It's worth noting the specific words that were chosen in Facebook and Apple's public statements. Note that neither one claimed that they didn't give the NSA access to customer information, instead they said that the NSA didn't have direct access to their servers. Direct access to the servers isn't the issue. We know in the case of AT&T the company forked a duplicate stream of all communications through a special room entitled Room 641A so that the NSA could use that data freely. There was no need to give them server access. Given the damage that this scandal has caused, you can be sure that if these companies were on the level they would have made very wide denials to remove all doubt. The use of carefully phrased statements that are technically true but designed to deceive is classic PR.

The idea that these companies cooperated by allowing the NSA routing communications to the NSA rather than giving the NSA access to their servers is corroborated by another classified report obtained by The Washington Post, where the arrangement is described as allowing "collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations," rather than directly to company servers.

We also know from the leaked documents that the government knew that if these companies were exposed they would likely withdraw from the program.

"98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft; we need to make sure we don’t harm these sources," the briefing’s author wrote in his speaker’s notes.

While as of yet we don't have the technical details of how Facebook, Apple and Yahoo granted access to customer data, Microsoft isn't in a position to formulate such carefully worded denials due to the specifics that were revealed regarding their participation. According to the documents obtained by The Guardian, Microsoft didn't just hand over access to customer communications, they actively assisted the NSA in developing a method to crack their own encryption to enable real time access and recording of Skype audio and video calls. Again we don't know the specifics of how the data was routed, but that's not really the point is it.


Over time it must have become clear to these companies that the public wasn't buying their denials, because recently both Google and Facebook have begun to engage in more sophisticated public relations techniques. Specifically they are re-framing the scandal as security issue, where the NSA is the bad guy and they are the knights in shining armor fighting to defend your privacy. It's also interesting to not that both Facebook and Google made statements to bolster this idea within two weeks of each other.

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt drew attention in a speech at SXSW this year when he claimed that Google had been attacked by both the NSA and by China and that they were encrypting customer data to protect privacy.

Then this past week Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, posted a statement expressing his disappointment in the U.S. government's behavior:

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.

 Now granted, the security issue that Zuckerberg is referring to here was worth looking at. It turns out that the NSA was caught in an operation in which they masqueraded as Facebook in order to take control of user computers. Taken in isolation Zuckerberg's outrage is perfectly justified, however from a public relations standpoint it has the effect of diverting anger away from Facebook for their part in handing over your personal information.

But what about the lawsuit that Facebook and Google filed demanding the right to tell their customers about the number of requests made by the NSA? Doesn't this show that they are operating in good faith?

Again pay attention to the careful wording. They are demanding permission to reveal the number of "requests", they aren't asking for permission to reveal the full scale of their cooperation. If the data sharing arrangement at Facebook and Google was set up like it was at AT&T the NSA wouldn't have needed to make any requests whatsoever. These companies filed a lawsuit for permission to release a number that is absolutely meaningless. It's a public relations stunt, pure and simple, but some people will fall for it.

Now some would make the argument that these companies felt legally compelled to cooperate with the NSA and that we cannot hold them accountable for their part in this, but that's nonsense. If they are willing to take the U.S. government to court now, after years of handing over your data, why didn't they take the government to court in the very beginning? They might have lost, but they would have at least alerted us to what was going on. Further more, now that Google and other companies are facing a serious trust issue they have claim to have taken steps to encrypt customer data in such a way that the NSA cannot access it. Well, why didn't they do this earlier? The truth is your privacy wasn't a priority until this blew up in their face.

If you read the writings of Edward Bernays, often referred to as the father of public relations, you'll discover that the real art of PR lies in the redirection of attention. If Silicon Valley can shift the NSA controversy away from PRISM, and focus it on security breaches, they may succeed in patching up their reputations. Judging from the comments on Mark Zuckerberg's post though, a sizable portion of their user base isn't buying it.

Sources:
Snowden documents show that the NSA impersonated Facebook to hack people's computers: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/17/snowden_docs_expose_how_the_nsa

Zuckerberg's public statement about the NSA's activities: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101301165605491

Google claims it was attacked by the NSA and China: http://rt.com/usa/google-schmidt-speech-sxsw-546/

Microsoft was exposed actively collaborating with the NSA to give them real time access to your Skype audio and video calls: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration...

Perhaps that's why Bill Gates doesn't like Snowden: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-rolling-stone-in...

Washington Post - Addresses the careful wording in the denials by Facebook and Apple: http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data...

AT&T exposed for routing all communications to the NSA back in 2006: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html

Room 641 A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A