The Washington Post and The Guardian
have revealed a US government mass Internet surveillance program
code-named "PRISM". They report that the NSA and the FBI have been
tapping directly into the servers of nine US service providers,
including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and
Skype, and began this surveillance program at least seven years ago. (clarifying slides)
These revelations are shaking up an international debate.
StartPage has always been very outspoken when
it comes to protecting people's Privacy and civil liberties. So it won't
surprise you that we are a strong opponent of overreaching,
unaccountable spy programs like PRISM. In the past, even government
surveillance programs that were begun with good intentions have become
tools for abuse, for example tracking civil rights and anti-war
protesters.
Programs like PRISM undermine our Privacy, disrupt faith in governments, and are a danger to the free Internet.
StartPage and its sister search engine Ixquick
have in their 14-year history never provided a single byte of user data
to the US government, or any other government or agency. Not under
PRISM, nor under any other program in the US, nor under any program
anywhere in the world.
Here's how we are different:
- StartPage does not store any user data. We make this
perfectly clear to everyone, including any governmental agencies. We do
not record the IP addresses of our users and we don't use tracking
cookies, so there is literally no data about you on our servers to
access. Since we don't even know who our customers are, we can't share
anything with Big Brother. In fact, we've never gotten even a single
request from a governmental authority to supply user data in the
fourteen years we've been in business.
- StartPage uses encryption (HTTPS) by default. Encryption
prevents snooping. Your searches are encrypted, so others can't "tap"
the Internet connection to snoop what you're searching for. This
combination of not storing data together with using strong encryption
for the connections is key in protecting your Privacy.
- Our company is based in The Netherlands, Europe. US
jurisdiction does not apply to us, at least not directly. Any request or
demand from ANY government (including the US) to deliver user data,
will be thoroughly checked by our lawyers, and we will not comply unless
the law which actually applies to us would undeniably require it from
us. And even in that hypothetical situation, we refer to our first
point; we don't even have any user data to give. We will never cooperate
with voluntary spying programs like PRISM.
- StartPage cannot be forced to start spying. Given the strong
protection of the Right to Privacy in Europe, European governments
cannot just start forcing service providers like us to implement a
blanket spying program on their users. And if that ever changed, we
would fight this to the end.
Privacy. It's not just our policy, it's our mission.
Sincerely,
Robert E.G. Beens
CEO StartPage.com and Ixquick.com
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