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Larry Page addresses PRISM

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Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#131

Post by earth2marsh »

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...

Letting out my inner conspiracy theorist for a moment, a prism can be used to split light. For example, think of a pentaprism mirror in many DSLR cameras.

Did the NSA choose "PRISM" because they are splitting the signal upstream of providers, thus giving private companies plausible deniability?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#132

Post by chime »

badclient wrote: post #113
chime wrote: post #63

I don't want any more fluff "no direct access" emails. I just want these questions to be answered with a YES/NO: 1. Is there any way that someone outside of Google, can get a copy of an email I sent from my gmail to my own gmail, without a warrant that specifies my exact gmail address? 2. If I delete my Google search history, is there any way for anyone to access this history, with or without a warrant? 3. If I make…

You don't need google to answer some of these. 2. If I delete my Google search history, is there any way for anyone to access this history, with or without a warrant? I would think google has historical backups they could refer to to pull out data that you've recently deleted. 3. If I make a Google search from an incognito window, is there any way for Google to connect it to my Google account via my IP address? I kno…

> I would think google has historical backups they could refer to to pull out data that you've recently deleted.

I should have clarified: except for temporary cache or periodic backups.

> Why not? You should already assume that google and pretty much any site logs your IP whether you are using incognito or not. You should also assume that any time you log in to gmail your IP is noted. It's extremely basic to do a db search for all gmail accounts that have been accessed by a given IP.

I meant if you do not login to Google and do a search in incognito mode, is that history stored? I can delete my history if I'm logged in. But there is no way to delete history by IP. It seems 'safer' to in fact use your logged in Google account to search.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#133

Post by revelation »

necubi wrote: post #48

For all those complaining about the language of this and other denials, what could possibly satisfy you? This seems as blanket as possible. "Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process." "We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exi…

Huh? This is the direct result of the governments toxic conduct. They issue orders that forbid you from talking about having received any such order, they classify everything (to the point where a parallel society to the tune of 1M people exist that have access to (e.g.) cables, as became apparent during the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables row), they institute secret courts, laws with secret interpretations..

They have poisoned public discourse beyond repair, and you make it sound like a conspiracy theory.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#134

Post by jonknee »

magicalist wrote: post #96
rosser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA's Utah data center was designed to host more storage than existed on the entire planet at the time. Sheer volume of data is among the least of their concerns.

According to the Wired story on it, it's four 25,000 square foot data center buildings[1]. That's smaller than one of Apple's smaller data centers. Apple's Oregon one is going to be 500,000 square feet. It's not going to be able to hold more than an average size datacenter, and there are a lot of data centers out there, each holding more data that would have to be copied. The NSA has huge capabilities, but they're no…

> It's not going to be able to hold more than an average size datacenter, and there are a lot of data centers out there. T

Why not? Most data centers aren't designed to store a bunch of stuff, but instead are designed to serve a lot of users. Facebook has at least one storage forward data center and it packs an exabyte into a 60k sqft footprint:

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/01/18/faceb...;

I don't think the NSA has zettabytes at hand, but you can store a massive amount of stuff in 100k square feet.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#135

Post by ajdecon »

Regardless of the wording, no statement from Google (or Facebook, Apple, etc) is really going to be believed. A denial from innocence is indistinguishable from a denial which is legally compelled by the language of an order form the government.

But to be honest, I don't bear any ill will toward Google on this. Based on their behavior in the past, I'm willing to believe that if this program existed, they pushed back to the extent they felt they could... but if they eventually complied, it's difficult to blame them, given the threats the government is capable of making.

Unfortunately, the only place to resolve this is at the government level, if it can be resolved at all.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#136

Post by thrownaway2424 »

mullingitover wrote: post #126
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so you can read wikipedia, but does it make any sense? A single 65MW datacenter with only 100ksqft of machine room space can hold all of the data in the world? That's not even as much power as one of Facebook's facilities in Oregon. Remember when IBM announced they'd built the largest filesystem in history? That was only 120PB. A YB is 10 million times bigger than that. Consider also that a YB is 1000x the entire…

>" A single 65MW datacenter with only 100ksqft of machine room space can hold all of the data in the world? That's not even as much power as one of Facebook's facilities in Oregon." You're off by a factor of 10-15 on the square footage. Per the wiki page, "The planned structure is 1 million or 1.5 million square feet."

"According to USACE, the center will have 100,000 square feet of raised-floor data center space and more than 900,000 square feet of technical support and administrative space."

Typical government installation. 90% overhead.

http://defensesystems.com/Articles/2011/01/07/NSA-spy-cyber-...

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#137

Post by mpyne »

cheald wrote: post #107
mullingitover wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly the kind of denial you'd expect them to issue if they were legally required to deny any involvement.

I agree, but what could Page say to convince us otherwise? Either the government is coercing them, and they have to issue lies as denials, or they are participating voluntarily and are voluntarily lying, or they are not participating. The second option seems unlikely to me.

Well, you can't prove a negative so I'm not sure there's anything Page can say.

But at the same time they can't all be right. NSA says it's getting data in some form from Google, Page says no direct access.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle then... but where?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#138

Post by saalweachter »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #50
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

the social "who's talking to who, and what sites did they visit" information... oh, probably this big -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

I'd like to point out that their upper capacity limit, "a trillion terabytes", would require approximately 1 trillion hard drives, probably at a cost of $10-$100 trillion. I feel comfortable saying that they have not built out to that scale yet.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#139

Post by pbreit »

jmillikin wrote: post #95
javert wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's completely weaselly. It leaves wide open the possibility that a 3rd party, like Palantir, has access to the data.

"Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period." "Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false." Those sentences seems straightforward and unambiguous.

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but those statements are hardly unambiguous. It's the "press reports" that are called false. Close-ended could pretty much be just as broad. The second sentence is hedged with "on such a scale". What is "information about our users' Internet activity"? Does that preclude sharing the actual internet activity? Also, Page keeps referring to "orders" but the press reports suggest some sort of volunteering.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#140

Post by ttrreeww »

mullingitover wrote: post #98
Dove wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false. I'm not sure how much more strongly you'd like t…

It's exactly the kind of denial you'd expect them to issue if they were legally required to deny any involvement.

There are cases in which you can't even confirm the existence of a gag order. I can not believe it's constitutional... but they do it.
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