Tech giants' demand for NSA reform 'a major game-changer', advocates say

Senior figures behind efforts to curtail the powers of American spy agencies have seized on the decision by the world’s largest tech companies to call for radical surveillance reform, saying the unexpected intervention is a potential “game-changer”.  In an open letter published jointly on Monday, eight tech giants, including Apple, Google and Facebook, said disclosures by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that basic rights and freedoms were being undermined. The companies – which also include Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, LinkedIn and Twitter, and have a combined value of $1.4tn – called for widespread changes that, if enacted, would end many of the current programs through which governments spy on citizens at home and abroad. "This is a major game-changer,” Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group, told the Guardian. She said the letter was certain to get the attention of the White House and Congress, not least because the often-cautious tech companies wrote the letter in unison, accompanied by personal statements from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and his counterpart at Google, Larry Page. Tech giants usually leave public lobbying to the dozen or so industry associations in Washington. It is unprecedented for the major tech giants to put their names to a single political statement of this kind...more