NEW YORK: International Business Machines Corp has not relinquished its customers’ data to the US government and would challenge any orders to do so, the company said in a blog post.
The post by the world’s largest technology service provider is the latest backlash by a tech company against US electronic surveillance practices, after published reports on Wednesday that alleged the government used websites to break into computers.
“IBM has not provided client data to the NSA or any other government agency under any surveillance programme involving the bulk collection of content or metadata,” Robert Weber, IBM’s senior vice president of legal and regulatory affairs, wrote in the blog post.
“If the US government were to serve a national security order on IBM to obtain data from an enterprise client and impose a gag order that prohibits IBM from notifying that client, IBM will take appropriate steps to challenge the gag order through judicial action or other means,” Weber said.
He said IBM would challenge national security orders to obtain data stored outside the US and that efforts to access that data should go through recognised legal channels like treaties. The NSA has “co-opted” more than 140,000 computers since August 2007 to inject them with spying software, according to a slide leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Reuters
