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Larry Page addresses PRISM

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Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#221

Post by aiiane »

sixothree wrote: post #177
bradleyjg wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I have an extremely hard time believing google received less than 2000 requests for user data last year.

Given that the graph indicates they received 20,000 - not 2,000 - I would have a hard time believing it as well!

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#222

Post by axelf »

cheald wrote: post #124
unreal37 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Google on this. The language is clear and non-weasel-y. Google does not hand over user data to the government unless specifically requested. There is no open-ended access. But I also believe the government works with ISP's (all major ISPs) so that they can intercept traffic. Which would be a type of MITM attack allowing them to get data from all major web sites.

Unless you can MITM SSL, having ISP access isn't enough. Remember, Google's the company that discovered that Turktrust had issued rogue CA certificates through Chrome's cert pinning.

unless you assume the NSA has the root SSL certs.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#224

Post by aiiane »

pbreit wrote: post #139
jmillikin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 som…

Of course it's hedged with a limitation of scale. Obviously Google, like any other company, is going to provide information on much smaller scales (e.g. a user or a handful of users) for investigation based on specific court-issued warrants. It would be lying to state that Google never provides information about any user activity at all.

What would you prefer Google to say?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#225

Post by d23 »

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…

Pedants gonna be pedantic.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#226

Post by drsintoma »

andreyf wrote: post #209
themgt wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama confirmed in a press conference that PRISM exists, so concluding the program is imaginary would seem to require a fair lack of critical thinking.

Could you quote/link to Obama's confirmation that Prism exists, and also the claim that it is imaginary?

> Could you quote/link to Obama's confirmation that Prism exists

I'll give you gizmodo because it has specifically the quotes http://gizmodo.com/president-obamas-prism-response-wont-make...

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#227

Post by aniket_ray »

brymaster wrote: post #184
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

Matt, I know you really love Google but you need to do a bit more research: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-nsa-secrecy-...

I'm sorry but that article talks about how Google and NSA worked together when the accounts of Chinese activist were being hacked.

How is that related to helping the US government spy on its citizens?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#228

Post by waterphone »

themgt wrote: post #187
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…

Obama confirmed in a press conference that PRISM exists, so concluding the program is imaginary would seem to require a fair lack of critical thinking.

Did he confirm PRISM exists, or the court order to Verizon? These are separate things. The Verizon story came first, followed by PRISM separately, less than a day later. Many people seem to be conflating the two.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#229

Post by tomkarlo »

hfantods wrote: post #202
tomkarlo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any statement that would actually make you feel comfortable? If you're going to choose to disbelieve someone's statements, there's very little they can say to change that.

Larry's post was designed to quickly assuage our knee-jerk fears about a giant like google having anything to do with "PRISM". In that, it is effective. I think for a lot of folks complaining, his language (i.e. "direct access") is just overly precise enough to leave too much room in the margins for technical loopholes concerning "who" has access to "what" data. When Larry defends their general policies stating googl…

Even legal docs are open to interpretation - they're not math. It's hard to expect a concise and readable post, not couched in legal phrasing, to somehow exclude all possible alternate interpretations. Especially when it can't be absolute in phrasing because there are known (and accepted) exceptions.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#230

Post by Dove »

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.

I don't think so. Those usually sound like,

    "We cannot confirm or deny the existence of such a program,"
or

    "It is not our policy to comment on national security topics"
or

    "No comment."
or even

    "We'll wait for the results of the investigation."
I don't think the government generally asks civilians to lie so enthusiastically, because . . . well, as a rule, they just aren't good at it.

No, I think it's most likely that Page doesn't know of any such program. Now, it's always possible that such a thing is being carried out on the scale everyone fears by a rogue, loyal-to-the-NSA employee, or a group of them. Or it's possible the original Powerpoint slide including Google as an information source is oversimplified or even inaccurate. Such things do happen when presenting overviews of program capabilities.

And many other things in between are possible. It's concerning, but . . . I'll wait for the results of the investigation. ;)

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