PESE A NEGARLO en sendos comunicados, Google y Facebook parece que sí estuvieron pasando de forma consciente información sobre sus usuarios al gobierno.

Y a pesar de que la ley estadounidense permite recoger esa información únicamente de ciudadanos extranjeros, en la práctica no ha sido así. La explicación es sencilla:

One of the notable claims we have heard, in light of the Verizon / PRISM revelations, is that data extraction measures are calibrated to make sure that 51% or more of affected individuals are non-U.S. persons. As a U.S. person, I don’t find this at all reassuring. To see why, let’s think about the underlying statistics.

As an example, consider Facebook, which appears to have about 1 billion users worldwide, of which roughly 160 million are in the U.S and the other 840 million are foreign. If you collect data about every single Facebook user, then you are getting 84% non-U.S. records. So even a “collect all data” procedure meets the 51% foreign test—despite doing nothing to shield Americans from collection.