Google chief legal officer, David Drummond, has said the company is not allowing the US government to have access to its computer systems under the surveillance programme, Prism.
Drummond told the Guardian "We’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there is no government programme that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported."
He said that the company would continue to push to be able to publish more information about secret requests for data, but added that Google does not write the laws.
Google is not lying about anything as the company is not in the business of lying, Drummond added.
"Our business depends on the trust of our users. And I’m an executive officer of a large publicly traded company, so lying to the public wouldn’t be the greatest career move," Drummond said.
Earlier this month, Google sent a letter to the offices of the Attorney General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation seeking permission to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) disclosures.
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