How IBM responded to the Snowden revelations with ‘good power’

IBM wasn’t connected to the U.S. government’s PRISM surveillance program. But when its existence leaked, the company had to react, writes former CEO Ginni Rometty.

I’d only been CEO of IBM for a year and a half when something happens that would change the nature of the global tech industry. In June 2013, an intelligence contractor named Edward Snowden leaks classified government documents to the Washington Post and the Guardian newspapers. The documents state that the U.S. government has been collecting data from several tech companies to track people potentially connected to terrorism. The surveillance program, called PRISM, conducts broad sweeps of internet traffic, making it possible for the private communications of American citizens to be collected and possibly viewed without a court order, amounting to warrantless surveillance.

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