[deleted]
Larry Page addresses PRISM
21–30 of 482 posts
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#22In his remarks today Obama said "Now, with respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States."
He's clearly stating that they do read non-American's emails. So how do they do it if they don't have access to Google's servers?
BTW, if you run a company outside of America you'd be crazy to rely on Google since the US could be reading your emails for corporate espionage purposes. I think in the long run these revelations are very threatening to Silicon Valley.
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#23When 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…
Why would they bother asking you, when they could simply ask your ISP? Why ask each customer?
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#24I 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…
[deleted]
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#25Here's an idea. Instead of telling us what you DON'T do, tell us what you DO do.
They're legally barred from doing so.
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#26Why is everyone so suspicious of Google to begin with? Is there a shred of evidence to lend any credibility to the accusations thus far? Given how Google's technology works, I imagine it would be quite an expense to provide the kind of access the govt. would want and Google hasn't been exactly overly enthused with having to comply with BS government requests(e.g. see how they deal with requests to scrub search results).
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#27(At least) one party did not tell the truth - opinions?
There's two middlemen layers in this game of telephone:
1. What the leaker communicated to news outlets 2. What the news outlets communicated to us
It seems likely that exact terms and technical capabilities have been misunderstood or misinterpreted. Already, there are common misconceptions arising from the public's interpretation of the news...for example, conflating the NSA's deal with Verizon to the PRISM program. And there's also the natural confusion that generally arises in any discussion of government surveillance programs...some people seem to be surprised that the NSA is spying on foreign communications, when that is pretty much NSA's raison d'etre.
I think we should take Page as a clear denial, that is, that he's not weaseling out on a technicality. That doesn't mean he couldn't be flat out lying, of course. I think it's also a believable that if Google were to participate in a program like PRISM, that Page would be one of the people in the know.
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#28Google doesn't know what the program is called inside the NSA, that is not earth shattering news. The problem is they don't need to "know" any of this. Hypothetically; If I was approached by the NSA for access to my users data... I would ask or come up with, at a minimum, some kind of Plausible Deniability... its the only sane option given the nature of these requests.
Ie. "Never heard of it... We push back as much as we can... See these push-backs in our transparency report. Feel Better?"
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#29I 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…
Same thing with the "we've never heard of PRISM" language a number of companies are using. Well, yeah - that code name probably stayed within the NSA.
Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM
#30Larry 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 no secret that companies (and libraries, etc) must provide indirect access:
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/U...;
What exactly do you think is happening, that Google is hiding? Where are the datacenters big enough to hold a whole extra copy of every piece of data google maintains? (plus every other company)