Silicon Valley image via Flickr/Patrick Nouhailler

And so, the industry backlash against secret mass surveillance begins in earnest.

Today, a group of the world’s largest tech companies has published a letter to the US government asking for wide reforms to mass surveillance in the interest of free expression, privacy, and transparency. Could this be a real strike to unauthorised surveillance, or is it just a PR exercise?

While the companies have spoken out against the NSA’s tactics before, this is the biggest and most coordinated response yet to the revelations of secret mass surveillance leaked in the Snowden docs. The letter, entitled An Open Letter to Washington, has been signed by AOL, Facebook, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo. Addressed to President Obama and the Members of Congress, it states:

We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide. The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual—rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It’s time for a change.

The signatories lay out five principles they want the government to endorse at the site ReformGovernmentSurveillance.com, which essentially set out a structure whereby the government’s authority to collect user data is limited, conducted under a strict and transparent legal framework, and in step with other jurisdictions. 

They also pointed out that they’ve been working to keep user data secure (indeed, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft have upped security measures in the fallout of the NSA revelations), but that unauthorised government surveillance undermines their responsibility to protect user privacy.

For our part, we are focused on keeping users’ data secure — deploying the latest encryption technology to prevent unauthorized surveillance on our networks and by pushing back on government requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope.

The letter is stronger in tone and more specific in its demands than the companies’ previous reactions to surveillance, such as their October letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which focused solely on transparency. But don’t think this is an entirely honorable and selfless move on the part of the tech companies. I hate to be a cynic, but they’ve clearly got a vested interest in making a public stand against surveillance.

When it comes down to it, the revelations of privacy breaches are bad for business, and the tech giants have suffered a reputation loss in the wake of the whole NSA debacle. It doesn’t look good when the government is intercepting data you promised your customers was secure, and that can affect your bottom line. The New York Times puts it in no uncertain terms, “They are trying to blunt the spying revelations’ effects on their businesses. Each disclosure risks alienating users, and foreign governments are considering laws that would discourage their citizens from using services from American Internet companies,” and points out that the cost of the leaked PRISM project to US cloud computing services could be as much as $180 billion by 2016, according to research by Forrester. 

The tech companies are also no doubt keen to deflect attention from the amount of user data they collect and store in the first place—they wouldn’t want to lose out on the lucrative business of personalized services and ads.

That said, does it really matter if these tech companies have their own interests at heart, so long as this motivates them to act in their users’ best interests? After all, it’s their business success that gives them a power of persuasion their users could never muster—they’re highly valued as political donors precisely because they’re rich and influential. When these tech giants, usually such ardent competitors, present a united front, they become a real force to reckon with.

So ultimately, regardless of whether this action is an honorable defense of user privacy or a self-serving PR exercise (and it’s probably a bit of both), it could very well represent our best bet at curbing surveillance.