WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange rails against Facebook, says it's a spy tool for US government 
 
 Dunham/AP The founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange said that Facebook is the most 'appaling spying machine ever invented'. 
 
 Maybe he's a MySpace guy. 
 
 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called Facebook "the most appalling spying machine ever invented" in an interview with Russia Today, pointing to the popular social networking site as one of the top tools for the U.S. to spy on its citizens. 
 
 "Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other and their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US Intelligence," he said. "Facebook, Google, Yahoo, all these major U.S. organizations have built-in infaces for US intelligence. 
 
 "Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook they are doing free work for the United States intelligence agencies," he added. 
 
 The comments were a bit strange, coming from the founder of a website best known for pushing spilling secret information. 
 
 In an email to the Daily News, a Facebook spokesman denied the company was doing anything that they weren't legally obligated to do, saying that "the legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard." 
 
 "We don't respond to pressure, we respond to compulsory legal process," the spokesperson wrote. "There has never been a time we have been pressured to turn over data -- we fight every time we believe the legal process is insufficient." 
 
 In any event, many Facebook users have been increasingly concerned about the sharing of their information. 
 
 In 2010, three Democratic senators asked the FTC to look at the social networking site's information-sharing policies. 
 
 The Wall Street Journal has reported that popular Facebook apps like Farmville and Causes also shared users' information with advertising and tracking companies. 
 
 Concerns about information-sharing has seemingly done little to dissuade the more than 250 million people who use Facebook - including someone who created an official WikiLeaks page on the site. 
 
 More than 1.72 million people clicked that they like it. 
 
 Assange is currently in England, awaiting extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. 
 
 nmandell@nydailynews.com ||||| SAN FRANCISCO — When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit. 
 
 Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. And in some cases, they changed their computer systems to do so. 
 
 The negotiations shed a light on how Internet companies, increasingly at the center of people’s personal lives, interact with the spy agencies that look to their vast trove of information — e-mails, videos, online chats, photos and search queries — for intelligence. They illustrate how intricately the government and tech companies work together, and the depth of their behind-the-scenes transactions. 
 
 The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence. 
 
 In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said. 
 
 The negotiations have continued in recent months, as Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel. Though the official purpose of those meetings was to discuss the future of the Internet, the conversations also touched on how the companies would collaborate with the government in its intelligence-gathering efforts, said a person who attended. 
 
 While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so. 
 
 Details on the discussions help explain the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program and the companies’ responses. 
 
 Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line between giving the government wholesale access to its servers to collect user data and giving them specific data in response to individual court orders. Each said it did not provide the government with full, indiscriminate access to its servers. 
 
 The companies said they do, however, comply with individual court orders, including under FISA. The negotiations, and the technical systems for sharing data with the government, fit in that category because they involve access to data under individual FISA requests. And in some cases, the data is transmitted to the government electronically, using a company’s servers. 
 
 “The U.S. government does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centers,” Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement on Friday. “We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law.” 
 
 Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the same distinction. 
 
 But instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said. 
 
 The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data. 
 
 Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company.
– Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has singled out Facebook as an "appalling spying machine" in an interview with Russia Today. Assange warned in an earlier speech at Cambridge University that information gathered on the Web could be used by governments to spy on its citizens. But this time he called "Facebook in particular the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and their communications, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo—all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence," he added. "Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook they are doing free work for the US intelligence agencies," he warned. He conceded that Facebook isn't working for or following orders from US intelligence, but said that the government is "able to bring to bear legal and political pressure" on the company. In response to Assange's interview, a Facebook spokesman told the New York Daily News that the company only turns over information when "legally required to do so." The "legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard," the spokesman noted.