Did Mark Zuckerberg Call President Obama About NSA Surveillance?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg might not seem like the first person to jump out of his proverbial chair to protest against NSA surveillance programs. But the social media mogul is apparently so perturbed about the endless NSA-related revelations that he took to his own social media platform to call out none other than the President of the United States: Barack Obama.

Zuckerberg wrote a status update on Facebook Thursday, sharing that he thinks the U.S. government should take more measures to respect users’ privacy and security. “The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat,” his statement reads. “I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.”

After his post was on Facebook for four hours it had already acquired more than 130,000 likes, nearly 17,000 shares and then generated hundreds of comments.

It should be noted that Zuckerberg never directly names the NSA in his Facebook opine, but his comments seems like he’s specifically targeting the surveillance program, which has essentially allowed the government to spy on Facebook users for years -- specifically, Forbes added, on people who live outside of the United States.

Since a slew of the NSA's inner workings have been revealed, social media users have become upset, with many feeling their privacy has been violated. “We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world,” Zuckerberg’s statement reads. “This is why I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.”

Zuckerberg added that the NSA needs to become more open, especially after it was rumored to be impersonating Facebook servers to infect users’ machines with spyware. “They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst,” Zuckerberg added.

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