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Why Silicon Valley’s High-Tech Corporations are Silent Over Internet Surveillance Debate in Congress

It is not always that the Silicon Valley’s world renowned business entities keep mum on any ongoing debate. However, the silence of these companies on the major internet surveillance debate has become more of a news. Be it Facebook Inc (FB.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) or other such majorly known firms, every one of them was missing from this major debate.It is not always that the Silicon Valley’s world renowned business entities keep mum on any ongoing debate. However, the silence of these companies on the major internet surveillance debate has become more of a news. Be it Facebook Inc (FB.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) or other such majorly known firms, every one of them was missing from this major debate. It was a debate over the renewal of a U.S. internet surveillance law. This new internet surveillance law is supposed to protect customer data as per the sources familiar with the matter have quoted. While the new law is supposed to protect the customer data, these giants believe that getting into the proposal would jeopardize the trans-Atlantic data transfer pact. The pact has already been given billion dollar support and getting into this new pact may severely damage the same.

Brief of Privacy Agreement

Technological companies and the privacy groups have always remained on different sides about the renewal of the present internet surveillance law. The section 702 that is a part of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) allows National Security Agency (NSA) to collect details on the emails and other digital communications of the foreign citizens who are living abroad Although the law not only allows to collect the digital data about the foreigners but also grant the permission for collecting the data on the unknown number of Americans. This is absolutely something that users may get worried about as their personal data may remain under the surveillance of the companies that are keeping an eye on user’s data.

The Debate on Law Renewable

Section 702 is going to expire at the end of the year and to reconsider the same, it is important for Republican controlled Congress to give its support to reauthorize the same. The matter of renewing this US surveillance law has got the support of Republican senators and the U.S. intelligence agencies too. They believe such laws could play a significant role for the security of the nation as a whole.

Privacy Shield Agreement

The privacy shield agreement defines a set of rules between the European Nations and the US. The points in the agreement are still not believed to offer complete security to the data of the users as it can be accessed by the security professionals, which is one of the major threats to users. While the major high-tech and social networking giants are continuously promising for the security of the data, users believe that the agreement could result in the security breach for the crucial customer’s data. The renewable is thus not getting the support from the major global techies. However, there is no official announcement from any of the world renowned companies mentioned in the beginning.

This Article is Originally Published here.

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