Maybe it’s because his own company has aspirations to be a privately owned version of the NSA:
If you thought that Google chief Eric Schmidt would take a more strident tone when discussing the National Security Agency spying scandal, think again.
“There’s been spying for years — there’s been surveillance for years, and so forth. I’m not going to pass judgment on that. It’s the nature of our society,” he told New America Foundation President Anne-Marie Slaughter at a public event in New York.
But Schmidt’s biggest concern about the spying wasn’t that the privacy of individuals had been violated, or that companies like Google were being forced to give the government access to their customers’ data, the Guardian reported.
It’s the nature of our society!?
No, it’s not! The United States has this thing called the FOURTH AMENDMENT, which is a part of the Bill of Rights, the first set of amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
The Fourth Amendment states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The NSA, as a government agency, is unquestionably violating the Fourth Amendment rights of pretty much every American with its unchecked, unrestrained spying.
Companies like Google have been complicit in the NSA’s surveillance regime by giving them access to user data. Because Google is so huge and has so many offerings, its datacenters contain a veritable gold mine of user data of enormous proportions. Those who use all of Google’s offerings are especially valuable, because Google knows so much about them. Google can offer the NSA one-stop shopping… and that makes Google very valuable to the federal government.
Years ago, Google fanboys would have dismissed the above as paranoia or conspiracy theories. They can’t do that anymore. Not in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations and not in the wake of Eric Schmidt’s continuing series of revealing comments.