Tech Giants Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft Send Letter to Government About NSA Spying: Social Media Companies Say No To NSA Surveillance [Photo]

Several tech companies sent a letter to the NSA yesterday in order to limit the amount of surveillance on their users. The initiative was led by Google and Microsoft, but was signed by several other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Ever since Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency, or NSA, was listening to private phone calls and reading private emails, companies such as Google and Microsoft have attempted to limit the amount of spying that the NSA can do.

Trevor Timm from the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, "It's now in their business and economic interest to protect their users' privacy and to aggressively push for changes. The NSA mass-surveillance programs exist for a simple reason: cooperation with the tech and telecom companies. If the tech companies no longer want to cooperate, they have a lot of leverage to force significant reform."

The American public was outraged when Edward Snowden leaked the NSA documents earlier this year. The documents detailed exactly how the NSA acquired personal data such as phone call transcripts, text messages and email from American citizens.

Larry Page, Google's co-founder and chief executive, criticized the government in a statement that he released along with the original letter. He wrote, "It's time for reform and we urge the U.S. government to lead the way. We are focused on keeping users' data secure, deploying the latest encryption technology to prevent unauthorized surveillance on our networks, and by pushing back on government requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope."

What do you think about the letter to the US Government from the big tech companies? Let us know what you think in the comments!