Given Snowden's claims, they may well not know. He claims the NSA is so advanced that they routinely break the best encryption available and can literally access anything on the internet.
Assuming that is true, the NSA can access your PC at home and get anything they like form it. Have you noticed that happening? Has any one reported it happening? We get incredible third part analysis of the likes for stuxnet, but for this, nothing what so ever.
So, we could say Snowden is wrong or lying. Or, we could say the NSA is so good no one has seen it happen and hasn't analyses the attacks.
On top of that, how many employees for Google, MS, FB, etc are also working for the US government secretly? Would Page and co know that?
So, why would Page and co have any idea their systems are compromised. Apart from responding to legal requests, they may have no idea.
On the other other hand, if this were true, I'd expect Page and co to be bright red furious, and I dont see that either.
I dont know. I do think it is possible that they didn't know everything. Although, given their reactions, if I had to bet actual money, I'd have to say they did. Their reactions kinda suggest they knew full well.
If they didn't know about the NSA accessing their servers, they damn well better treat it like any other serious breach of their security instead of denying it is going on!!
Different sources from all over the world come out with credible information that the NSA and various other security agencies are routinely accessing your data. If a company truly did not know this was going on, they should now be in alarm code red, figure out which of your systems are compromised, try to find out which employees did it and fire those involved.
FB, Google, etc, if people got into your systems without your knowledge, then you got hacked. Not being aware of this doesn't make it better. Flat-out denying it within hours, before you even seriously looked into the matter, makes you complicit or at least suspect.
Did Google deny anything was going on when Chinese Intelligence infiltrated their servers? No, they rang the alarms, investigated and tried to fix it.
BTW before anyone points it out, I am aware it's pretty naive to expect the above behaviour. It's an intentional hypothetical example to illustrate they are complicit even if their CEOs are unaware of what is going on, by not treating it as the serious breach in security that it is.
Do you have a reference/quote for that? That's extremely interesting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-n...