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Larry Page addresses PRISM

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Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#161

Post by sjs382 »

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.

We obviously stil have a lot to learn about PRISM... But with that said, I have some conflicting instincts & feelings about all of this and the company responses.

On one hand, I would think a very-visible CEO of a major corp would keep their name off of a press release, if the press release was a lie that they were compelled to tell by the government.

On the other hand, I feel like each company's response and their use of the exact same terminology ("direct access", etc) feels like a wink and a nod.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#162

Post by ket »

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.

> or they are participating voluntarily and are voluntarily lying, ... seems unlikely to me.

Their business is based on user's data. If you do not feel comfortable giving them your data, it might hurt their business. Hence, IMHO, they do have some incentive to deny PRISM, regardless of the facts.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#163

Post by tnorthcutt »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #141
mullingitover wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

It's a clear criticism, but not a clear assurance that Google isn't cooperating ("voluntarily" or not) with those "legal procedures".

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#164

Post by mullingitover »

deelowe wrote: post #116
mullingitover wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you missed it, this is the program he acknowledged - Note the three Google products whose logos feature prominently in the leaked doc: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n...

I missed the pictures of the slides. That said, there are ways to target these services without involving the companies directly. Up to and including espionage itself.

One of the earlier articles discussed the government's concerns about keeping the program secret, lest they lose the cooperation of their private sector partners. That isn't a concern that they'd have if they were implementing the program through espionage.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#165

Post by colin_jack »

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.

One thing we know for sure is the truth of what they have been doing will leak out.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#166

Post by danso »

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.

So, you'd feel more comfortable if the company threw in some rhetoric about morals and freedom that are, as assertions, impossible to verify, but would make people feel more warm and fuzzy?

So, basically, what politicians put into their speeches?

Read over your statement again. There's very little of substance in there. For example, what does "this" in "We would never do 'this'" mean? And I'm not being pedantic, because exact language is important here. The question is, what could a non-PRISM-supporting Google say that would differ from what we see in the OP?

And this: It goes against everything we personally believe in and stand for.

OK...let's assume "It" has been properly defined. This hyperbole would be a lie, because....everything? Again, impossible.

"Even if we were legally required to cooperate, we would resist and suffer incarceration if necessary."

OK...cooperate in what? The statement you've proposed leaves room for other kinds of cooperation, if not technically the kind being alleged right now. So this statement doesn't resolve anything.

"We believe in freedom more strongly than we fear the consequences of not cooperating with an oppressive government"

OK, same objections as before. But -- and again, I'm referring to an alternate reality in which Google is standing up against the NSA and PRISM, which may or may not be the reality we are actually living -- if Page is telling the truth about knowing what PRISM stands for before yesterday, then the statement you've proposed is impossible for him to assert, because we still don't know everything about PRISM...and so how would Page know if PRISM is the act of an oppressive government? He literally would not know because PRISM was unknown to him until yesterday.

And if you're saying, well, he should just know, because obviously Google is taking part in the program...well, that's begging the question.

And if you're saying, well, he should just be able to make that statement because any reasonable person, upon reading the reports yesterday, would conclude that PRISM is the act of an oppressive government. OK, that's fine, but that's still not really an assertion of fact, it's just rhetoric.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#167

Post by Matt_Cutts »

bitwize wrote: post #122
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…

Larry Page wants to live. And he wants Google to keep functioning as a company, and not e.g., to have sudden tax issues crop up with the IRS. He has plenty of incentive to tell an out-and-out lie in this case.

Oh come on. Google is willing and able to push back on overly broad governmental requests. When the Department of Justice sent subpoenas to 34 companies in 2005 asking for months of user queries, Google was the only company I know of that fought back in court and won. I know because I wrote a declaration for that case. See http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/doj-sent-subpoenas-to-34-compa...; and http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-responds-to-doj-subpoen...; for example.

We were also the first company to publish our transparency report on governmental requests, and the first company to include any specific number ranges on the number of national security letter (NSLs) that we get.

See also http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/google-fights-nsl&#...; about national security letters. The appropriate and constructive place to channel frustation is at bad laws/legal provisions.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#169

Post by snowwrestler »

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.

I don't think that the ethics are so clear cut. Let's suppose that Google's servers contain data that the U.S. federal government could use to prevent an act of violence that would harm or kill innocent people. Is it more ethical to deny access to this data on privacy grounds, or to grant access to this data to prevent violence?

The typical response here on HN is that the threat of terrorism is greatly overstated. This is probably true, but I don't think it's reasonable to assert that the threat of terrorism is nonexistent. Given the amount of people who use Google's services, I think it's highly likely that such data does exist on Google's servers.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#170

Post by cheald »

sjs382 wrote: post #161
cheald wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We obviously stil have a lot to learn about PRISM... But with that said, I have some conflicting instincts & feelings about all of this and the company responses. On one hand, I would think a very-visible CEO of a major corp would keep their name off of a press release, if the press release was a lie that they were compelled to tell by the government. On the other hand, I feel like each company's response and their u…

I completely agree, and I don't know how to reconcile the two.

If I was going to go completely conspiracy-nutter, I'd say that Page has been kept out of the loop intentionally for plausible deniability, and the actual incursion happens at a much lower level, where the people involved are coerced into keeping their mouths shut. That way, the bigwigs get to tell what they think is the truth, the NSA gets their data, and nobody is the wiser.

Granted, I think that belongs more in the plot of a thriller novel than in this actual world we're living in, but given the revelations of the past couple of days, fiction doesn't seem that implausible.

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