Mark Zuckerberg give an interview at a tech conference, photo by Jdlasica via Creative Commons

"Frankly, I think the government blew it," said Zuckerberg on Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in San Francisco.

Zuckerberg criticized the government for hindering American Internet firms in their attempts to conduct worldwide business. 

According to Zuckerberg, the day after news about the NSA Internet surveillance broke, the government was tremendously unhelpful in their sentiment that the “spying” was focused on non-Americans. 

“Wonderful, that’s really helpful for companies trying to work with people around the world,” said Zuckerberg sarcastically. “Thanks for going out there and being clear. I think that was really bad.

While many people have been critical of the NSA’s undisclosed snooping in people’s private lives, Zuckerberg’s criticisms come not just as a private citizen, but as a business owner whose professional integrity is affected by how the government deals with people’s security. 

“It’s our job to protect everyone who uses Facebook,” acknowledged Zuckerberg. “It’s our government’s job to protect all of us, our freedom and the economy. They did a bad job at balancing this.”

Zuckerberg complained that Facebook is not allowed to publicly disclose how many NSA requests it approves or denies. In spite of this however, Zuckerberg assured his audience that Facebook is trying to create greater transparency for its users, a position that he has taken very seriously, posting a note to users on his own Facebook page immediately following the news of NSA surveillance. 

Contact Executive Producer Sara Newman here and follow her on Twitter.