Excerpts
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Newly published information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is reinforcing the notion that U.S. spying spreads wide and goes deep.
The latest bombshell, partly denied by the Obama administration, appears in The Washington Post. It says U.S. intelligence agencies have gained access to hundreds of millions of Google and Yahoo! user accounts by secretly tapping into company data centers. Late today, six top tech companies Yahoo!, Google, AOL, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, sent a letter to Congress, calling for enhanced privacy protections.
Barton Gellman broke the story for The Washington Post.
Welcome, Bart Gellman. How are you? Welcome to the NewsHour.
What is the difference between what you're reporting that happened and what the White House and the administration is pushing back at and saying didn't happen?
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GWEN IFILL: In -- so, in this case, what you're saying is what they did is not illegal because it was -- involved international networks?
BARTON GELLMAN, The Washington Post: Well, it's a bit of a rough analogy, but if your -- your accountant would say you're allowed to avoid taxes. You're not allowed to evade them.
So they're taking full advantage of the rules as they interpret them. There are some outside surveillance lawyers who say it may raise some interesting questions about lawfulness, but on its face I don't see any evidence that they're flouting the law here. They're using it in ways that the companies and the public didn't expect.
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