Google’s Executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has flatly denied any knowledge of the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) intrusions and tapping of the company’s data.
In an interview with UK Guardian newspaper, Schmidt said that he and other members of the company were outraged by the snooping carried out by the NSA and the British GCHQ (intelligence agency).
He also said Google had since begun toughening encryptions of internal traffic to prevent further intrusions and protect the users’ privacy.
According to Google chairman, the number of requests for data filed by the NSA is small; describing the debate about the level of oversight there should be on government surveillance as “a luxury problem” compared with countries such as China, which enforces tougher censorship on internet users.
But this censorship will be useless and fade away in China in the few coming years, he said. The reason is that the growing number of users of smartphones and social networks such as Weibo and WeChat, which have around 300 million users each, will eventually overwhelm the ability of Chinese government to censor online discussions and activities.
He also laid out his thoughts about upcoming general technological change wondering whether the rapid rise of tablets could lead to the death of Television.
“The biggest change for consumers in 2014 is going to be that everyone’s going to have a smartphone,” Mr. Schmidt said. “And the fact that so many people are connected to what is essentially a supercomputer means a whole new generation of applications around entertainment, education, social life, those kinds of things. The trend has been that mobile is winning. It’s now won”, he added.
It is true that “there are more tablets and phones being sold than personal computers – people are moving to this new architecture very fast”, he stressed.
