US government agent of big corporations: Analyst

A political analyst says the United States government is working closely with big technology companies as its spying and law enforcement agencies are “sources of a great deal of cash flow” for those corporations.

“The revelation that the NSA has been paying Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and probably many, many others for handing over emails and whatever other electronic communications they have, transactions on Facebook, etc is really not a surprise,” Don DeBar told Press TV on Saturday.

“The fact that the US government, including the NSA and all of the other Intel and so-called law enforcement agencies, really are agents of multinational corporations and also sources of a great deal of cash flow for those corporations,” he added.

“They [the government] tax the American public and then they hand out defense contracts to firms like Microsoft and Google and the Facebook and IBM and others, so there’s a principle on agency relationship that’s sort of symmetrical, where the government is hiring these corporations to do work for it and of course the corporations through campaign contributions hire the government officials to work for them,” the analyst explained.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, have been cooperating with the NSA in running its PRISM surveillance program, according to documents leaked by American whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The documents, which shed light on millions of dollars paid by the NSA, represent the first evidence of a financial relationship between the US spying agency and the Internet companies.

The NSA made such payments after a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court ruling in October 2011 found that the agency was gathering thousands of Americans’ emails and other electronic communications illegally.