BarackObamadefendsUS surveillancetactics

BarackObamadefendsUS surveillance tactics

Barack Obama: "You can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience"

President Barack Obama has defended newly revealed US government phone and internet surveillance programmes, saying they are closely overseen by Congress and the courts.

Mr Obama said his administration had struck "the right balance" between security and privacy.

He also stressed US internet communications of US citizens and residents were not targeted.

And he tried to reassure the US "nobody is listening to your phone calls".

Mr Obama was commenting on revelations this week in the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting or tapping into vast amounts of telephone and internet communications data.

Facebook denial

The news accounts - subsequently confirmed by officials - roiled Washington DC, with privacy advocates criticising the surveillance as an unlawful intrusion and many in Congress defending the programmes as appropriate counter-terrorism tools.

On Wednesday night, the UK's Guardian newspaper reported a secret court had ordered phone company Verizon to hand over to the NSA millions of records on telephone call "metadata".

That report was followed by revelations in both the Washington Post and Guardian that the NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a programme known as Prism.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, said the press reports were "outrageous" and denied Facebook's participation in the programme.

His statement echoed those of other internet companies, who said they had not given the government direct access to their servers.

Mr Zuckerberg said: "We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received.

"And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of Prism before yesterday.