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Larry Page addresses PRISM

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Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#141

Post by Matt_Cutts »

mullingitover wrote: post #115
danso wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, in an alternate reality, what would a clear, flat-out denial look like? I mean, how could we tell such a thing differently than what was in the OP? First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of…

"We would never do this, not because the government hasn't asked us to, but because it's morally abhorrent. It goes against everything we personally believe in and stand for. Even if we were legally required to cooperate, we would resist and suffer incarceration if necessary. We believe in freedom more strongly than we fear the consequences of not cooperating with an oppressive government." That kind of thing.

The blog post concludes with "But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish." That's a clear statement criticizing overly broad secrecy provisions.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#142

Post by riotingpscifis »

Dove wrote: post #34
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…

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…

Consider the NSA having MITM capabilities before the data reaches google:

1) This is exactly what you would need to do, to consider it realtime

2) None of the denials cover this

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#143

Post by bradleyjg »

danso wrote: post #41
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…

OK, in an alternate reality, what would a clear, flat-out denial look like? I mean, how could we tell such a thing differently than what was in the OP? First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of…

Instead of enumerating what they don't do, which leads one to wonder what's left out, they could exhaustively enumerate the ways that they do cooperate. To a certain extent that's what they do with the transparency report. But I saw no strong claim that the report was complete, on the contrary the "whenever possible" language outright suggests the report is incomplete.

I'm sympathetic to being caught between a rock and a hard place, but given that this program only seems to involve US based companies, I would suggest that where ever possible people should prefer non-US software and services. Just as one prefers non-Chinese hardware for the exact same reason.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#144

Post by bskap »

glesica wrote: post #72

I assume the government would require them to deny involvement, just like companies aren't (weren't?) allowed to discuss NSLs. Consequently, I view the denials as meaningless.

So then what could these companies do to convince you, short of giving you physical access to all of their datacenters and shell access to all of their servers?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#145

Post by chime »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #123

Personally, I'm really glad that Google published such a clear, plain-spoken post to tackle this issue head on. This whole issue makes me want to donate a bunch of money to the EFF. If anyone else feels the same way, you can donate to the EFF here: https://supporters.eff.org/donate and I believe a lot of employers will match contributions.

EFF is certainly doing a great job right now, so donations are definitely going to help.

Let me ask you this - do you feel 100% comfortable that nobody outside of Google can read your personal gmail?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#146

Post by necubi »

revelation wrote: post #133
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 p…

At this point, it pretty much is a conspiracy theory. The only evidence we have of these companies' involvement is the leaked slides, which could have been the result of over-promising from a contractor or a misunderstanding from a non-technical manager. We have a lot of evidence to the contrary, particular that nearly every company allegedly involved has issued strong denials, which, again, they cannot be compelled to do by NSLs.

We can't conflate everything the government or the NSA does. This program seems unlikely for a number of reasons, including the conspiracy aspect (quite a lot of engineers working for Google, Apple, etc. would have to be in on it) and the technical challenges involved. Do you have any idea how much data Google produces? How complicated their infrastructure is?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#147

Post by Thrymr »

chime wrote: post #132
badclient wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I can delete my history if I'm logged in.

At least you can mark it as deleted, and you can't access it anymore. Is it really "deleted"?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#148

Post by thrownaway2424 »

jonknee wrote: post #125
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…

Facebook's servers spend most of their time finding, sorting and then transmitting bits to the billion people who use Facebook. Storing a bunch of data and storing a bunch of data that needs to be dynamically assembled in real time for a billion users are two very different things. Regardless, no one has theorized that the NSA storing yottabytes of data. The (still probably crazy) rumors are zettabytes.

"no one has theorized" that except for Wikipedia, Wired magazine, C-Net, and most of the people commenting on this thread.

"NSA to store yottabytes in Utah data centre" -- http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/nsa-to-store-yottabytes-in-u...;

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#149

Post by snowwrestler »

riotingpscifis wrote: post #142
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…

Consider the NSA having MITM capabilities before the data reaches google: 1) This is exactly what you would need to do, to consider it realtime 2) None of the denials cover this

If it's MITM between user and Google, then Google would not be coordinating or even necessarily aware.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#150

Post by yuvadam »

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…

Look at how governments these days are acting. Can you afford to assume that the answer to all these questions is NO?
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