Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Larry Page addresses PRISM

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 482 posts

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#11

Post by DannyBee »

chrisacky wrote: post #4

I can't understand the repeated use of "direct access". It's the kind of language a lawyer would use to qualify a patent clause. - We do not provide direct access to our servers. - We do not provide direct access nor is there a backdoor. - O, but we do still pipe all of your data to external NSA servers. Every company named (I'm not just picking on Google here) has come out with the same overarching statement. "We do…

They can't say "we don't provide access", because depending on the law, they are forced to.

They say "we do not provide direct access", because as explained, any access goes through proper legal channels.

I'm not sure what you'd call it?

Remember language matters, and these are actionable public communications.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#14

Post by hga »

Aren't these the same words we've been hearing from the others, ones that ignore the concept of a front door, push mechanism to satisfy government demands that cannot be revealed without committing a felony?*

I'd be a bit happier if we were to hear from Soviet refugee Sergey Brin....

* That's one of the terrible things about doing everything in secret; we know that if Google is subject to a broad demand from a National Security Letter they can't tell us that without suffering terrible penalties. The government has set up a situation where we literally are not able to trust the words of Google et. al.---at least prior to a major figure deciding to pay that penalty for the greater good. Which history tells us requires a rare courage.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#15

Post by ceejayoz »

packetslave wrote: post #8
chrisacky wrote: post #4

I can't understand the repeated use of "direct access". It's the kind of language a lawyer would use to qualify a patent clause. - We do not provide direct access to our servers. - We do not provide direct access nor is there a backdoor. - O, but we do still pipe all of your data to external NSA servers. Every company named (I'm not just picking on Google here) has come out with the same overarching statement. "We do…

Read the blog post. "Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period"

Which is still pretty flexible language. "Oh, it's not open-ended access, it's limited to the conditions in the authorization..."

The Verizon order was limited to 3 months, for example, which is hardly open-ended... except that it presumably got re-upped every three months.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#17

Post by tomkarlo »

chrisacky wrote: post #4

I can't understand the repeated use of "direct access". It's the kind of language a lawyer would use to qualify a patent clause. - We do not provide direct access to our servers. - We do not provide direct access nor is there a backdoor. - O, but we do still pipe all of your data to external NSA servers. Every company named (I'm not just picking on Google here) has come out with the same overarching statement. "We do…

I believe everyone's using the term "direct access" in contrast to the access the government is already known to have, which is via warrant or other "indirect" requests.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#18

Post by gridscomputing »

andyl wrote: post #9

Larry Page: "the U.S. government does not have direct access" Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access" Facebook: "We do not provide any government organization with direct access" Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access" Remarkably consistent - as if it was coordinated, or scripted by an attorney...

It's not "direct" access, it's access through a one-way live xml feed

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#20

Post by thrownaway2424 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #6

When I worked IT for a medium sized university we were asked by the DOJ to install switches that copied all internet traffic directly to an unspecified government server. We were told all ISPs (anyone providing internet to more than 100 persons) were told to do this as well. We refused to comply obviously as the request was absurd, but in the small print of the request we were told we were not allowed to speak of the…

Please throw out an estimate of how big you think a mirror of all Google's network traffic might be.
Post reply on HN