Cisco SAYS It Wants the NSA to Stop Intercepting Its Product

Updated below.

In a letter [to president Obama] dated May 15, John Chambers, chief executive officer and chairman of the networking equipment giant [Cisco], warned of an erosion of confidence in the U.S. technology industry and called for new "standards of conduct" in how the NSA conducts its surveillance.

[...]

The letter follows the circulation of pictures on the Internet showing NSA staff opening boxes of Cisco gear, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. "There have been allegations that the NSA has intercepted IT equipment in transit from manufacturers to customers to help monitor and gain information on surveillance targets," the paper wrote.

[...]

"We simply cannot operate this way, our customers trust us to be able to deliver to their doorsteps products that meet the highest standards of integrity and security," Chambers said in the letter.

[...]

In a separate blog post on Cisco's site dated May 13, the company's general counsel, Mark Chandler, wrote that "...we ought to be able to count on the government to ... not interfere with the lawful delivery of our products in the form in which we have manufactured them."

  Reuters

A letter to the president and a blog post? How about a lawsuit against the US government and the NSA?  Oh, wait.  Let me guess....like Google and other social media companies, Cisco was complicit as long as it was a secret?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 1:57PM:

Well, what do you know.....
NSA presentation slide:

Did these guys not know this slide was out there?  Or maybe they figured not that many people would notice (or care)?

Further Update:  5/20/14:  In Glenn Greenwald's new book, No Place to Hide, he states that there is no evidence in any of the Snowden documents that Cisco was either aware or cooperating with the NSA in this regard.