Technology groups hit back at spy chief claims Technology companies and industry insiders have rejected accusations that they are not doing enough in the fight against terrorism. They say they have been unfairly targeted in comments by Britain's electronic spying chief and that it is up to the world's governments to strike a grand bargain balancing data privacy and national security. "Silicon Valley is an easy target," said one senior executive at a US tech group. But a far more nuanced and considered response is required to address the fundamental question of a legal process based on user trust, transparency and due process. He added that striking one-off bilateral deals with governments set a dangerous precedent, as countries with "less regard for due process and the rule of law" would look to western governments to justify their own activities in restricting access to the internet. The targets of criticism by Robert Hannigan, the head of Britain's eavesdropping agency GCHQ, include companies set up with the express purpose of creating "dark nets" and other technologies designed to be completely invulnerable to hackers or intelligence services alike. Mike Janke, co-founder of Silent Circle, the encryption company behind the privacy-focused Black Phone, summed up a common reaction in the tech industry: "Anything in the world can be used for ill . . . eball hat, a camera, a gun, a shovel but we don't regulate them so heavily like encryption." He added that intelligence agencies had other ways of finding information using "gum shoe" work or subpoenas. Tech groups are caught in a bind. Their businesses rely on people being willing to store ever more personal data online. But particularly after the revelations of widespread spying opened up by Edward Snowden, the risk is that people will stop trusting these companies if they are too cosy with governments and quick to acquiesce to demands to hand over the intimate details of users" digital lives. The intelligence services like GCHQ fear that tech companies have overreacted to the Snowden revelations, locking down their networks to keep out unwanted intrusions to such a degree that they have made it easier for terrorists to operate. According to an executive at one big tech concern, however, those steps were prompted by earlier fears of hacking from China and were already well in train, even if the Snowden leaks led to an acceleration. The fact that democratic governments like the UK now also found it harder to conduct surveillance was an "unintended consequence," this person said. There is also a fear on the part of agencies outside the US that the slow and cumbersome legal process for tapping information on suspects held by the mainly American companies that dominate the global internet has made life particularly hard - while the US's own intelligence services have more easy access. The US tech executive noted, for example, that the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty under which governments can share information for the purposes of criminal prosecutions still requires the submission of a written request from one government agency to another. Only governments are in a position to set the international norms for information-sharing that can strike the right balance between security and privacy, according to most tech companies. "This is an international issue that needs global solutions," said Stefan Weitz, the director of Bing, Microsoft's search engine. Governments need to work together to develop an international framework that is transparent, principled and comprehensive that resolves conflicts of law and is grounded in human rights tenets. Lawyers added that tech groups face a confusing patchwork of international laws and regulations by which governments can request data and share it. "Tech companies have been caught as the piggy in the middle - it's the global legal infrastructure that needs to catch up with commerce," said Vinod Bange, a London-based data protection lawyer at international law firm Taylor Wessing. They are subject to demands and requests in different countries, but the products and the platforms they provide do not know those borders because they flow beyond them. Mr Bange also said that Mr Hannigan's use of wartime metaphors such as "command and control network" were "a leap too far." He added: "What's being referred to is the use of a platform to disseminate information, and that being used by terrorists. But if we took the technology out of it, we would never have demonised the suppliers of pens and paper that people inscribed propaganda messages with.