An anti-terror chief has stated that spying on the public’s Google searches, along with their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, is all completely fine and legal.
The UK’s director general of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism Charles Farr has said that the Government’s spying on its citizens is fair game, due to searches made on Google and posts mode to social networking sites all being “external communications”, due to the location of each site’s web servers being abroad
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Mr. Farr didn’t confirm nor deny whether the British government monitors its citizen’s communications made via the Internet, only that it is legal for them to do so. He said: “it will be apparent that the only practical way in which the Government can ensure that it is able to obtain at least a fraction of the type of communication in which it is interested is to provide for the interception of a large volume of communications”.
Mr. Farr’s statement was issued as a response to increased pressure made by several institutions such as Privacy International and Amnesty, with legal challenges made in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks and NSA revelations.
