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Yahoo names US surveillance critic as its chief security officer

Yahoo names US surveillance critic as its chief security officer

By NDTV Correspondent | Updated: 11 March 2014 12:34 IST

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Yahoo has named well-known security researcher Alex Stamos as its chief information security officer, tapping a vocal critic of the US government's secret surveillance programs for the position.

Stamos was one of the primary organizers of TrustyCon, a gathering of prominent technology experts last month who had pulled out of the RSA security conference in San Francisco amid growing discord over some technology companies' cooperation with U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts.

Yahoo officials and Stamos could not be reached for comment on his appointment, which was announced Monday on the company's blog by Yahoo Senior Vice President Jay Rossiter.

(Also see: Yahoo in 2013: 28 acquisitions, $1 billion spent on product development)

The blog said Stamos will lead a team of Yahoo "paranoids" charged with making products as secure as possible.

Welcoming @alexstamos, our new #CISO http://t.co/D1Qb5T6c9F
-- Yahoo Inc. (@YahooInc) March 10, 2014

Back in February, Yahoo had joined Facebook, Google and other tech firms in protests against US spying. The coalition of companies, known as Reform Government Surveillance, urged more limits on collections of Americans' electronic data and greater oversight and transparency about the secret operations.

Top executives from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, LinkedIn and Twitter published a joint statement and sent a letter to President Barack Obama and members of Congress.

(Also see: Facebook, Google and other tech firms join protests against US spying)

Technology companies had expressed outrage last year after media accounts based on leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed that the U.S. and the Britain intercept massive amounts of electronic Web metadata abroad from foreign computer users and sometimes from Americans.

Executives highlighted their concerns during talks with administration officials about the spying programs, but Obama did not commit to curtailing the NSA's sweeps of data from the Internet.

Written with inputs from AP and Reuters

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