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White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

theweek.co.uk

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Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#11

Post by smtddr »

Whatever your views on this are, I hope nobody is actually surprised. If I were a $CURRENT_MEDIA_BOOGIEMAN_SCAPEGOAT_THINKOFTHECHILDREN, I would definitely assume that the usgov has access to any "big data" on the general public and can get it anytime they want. My plans for world-domination won't be sent through gmail or sent in a private message on facebook, or an text-msg on VerizoNSA. I'd take the time to learn and use PGP.

Only regular citizens will be caught by this and... the whitehouse knows it. I only wish the general public could see HN now. Someone with lots of money,looks-at-Google, should buy like 2mins of commercial-time during the Super-bowl to talk about stuff like this.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#12

Post by ig1 »

Facebook: "We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers."

Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers"

AOL: "nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers."

Paltalk: "Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to its servers"

Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers"

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#13

Post by danso »

coldcode wrote: post #2

Mark and Larry seem to disagree. Someone's not telling the truth.

Or...you may be misinterpreting what's at issue. I can't claim to really know either, but from what I gather, the issue at hand is: Does the NSA have a direct feed into Google's servers, via PRISM?

Google says "No".

However, Google has not denied giving government access to user data: in fact, Google for a few years has been publishing a report of how many times governments ask it for user data:

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests&#x...;

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#14

Post by jiggy2011 »

smtddr wrote: post #11

Whatever your views on this are, I hope nobody is actually surprised. If I were a $CURRENT_MEDIA_BOOGIEMAN_SCAPEGOAT_THINKOFTHECHILDREN, I would definitely assume that the usgov has access to any "big data" on the general public and can get it anytime they want. My plans for world-domination won't be sent through gmail or sent in a private message on facebook, or an text-msg on VerizoNSA. I'd take the time to learn a…

I'm no intelligence expert, but I'd be surprised if the NSA would expect something like this to find a "smoking gun" proving that person X is planning Y.

More likely you already have suspects, and your suspects have acquaintances , family etc.

You would be more interested in looking at these people, who do they network with on social media, what are they interested in? Might they be knowingly or unknowingly be providing material support?

You would probably use this information to build up a broader profile and see which avenues are worth investigation.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#16

Post by reledi »

danso wrote: post #13
coldcode wrote: post #2

Mark and Larry seem to disagree. Someone's not telling the truth.

Or...you may be misinterpreting what's at issue. I can't claim to really know either, but from what I gather, the issue at hand is: Does the NSA have a direct feed into Google's servers, via PRISM? Google says "No". However, Google has not denied giving government access to user data: in fact, Google for a few years has been publishing a report of how many times governments ask it for user data: http://www.google.com…

Fixed link: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#17

Post by 7952 »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #10

The presentation makes it seem they are harvesting the data. That would resolve any apparent contradiction. The biggest question is how? Surely google has noticed these man in the middle attacks. I think the guardian misinterpreted the word "provider". Edit: it appears the NSA has google's ssl keys. That would explain all the talk about "direct access".

What is the source on the SSL keys? Arguably a lot of metadata could be gleaned without even decrypting the data. If an IP is tied to an identity, timing of traffic alone would be very revealing.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#18

Post by elchief »

ig1 wrote: post #12

Facebook: "We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers." Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers" AOL: "nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers." Paltalk: "Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to its servers" Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our serve…

"we do however give them a data dump every minute"

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#19

Post by denzil_correa »

Can someone just tell what the final deal is? I'm quite annoyed by conflicting reports from the media, Internet firms and the US government. Also, please stop playing with words. It doesn't matter if the program is named PRISM or Hexagon. What matters is the access powers to otherwise private data by governments.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#20

Post by fchollet »

denzil_correa wrote: post #19

Can someone just tell what the final deal is? I'm quite annoyed by conflicting reports from the media, Internet firms and the US government. Also, please stop playing with words. It doesn't matter if the program is named PRISM or Hexagon. What matters is the access powers to otherwise private data by governments.

The White House has confirmed that PRISM existed, and has condemned the leak. This means that the power point slides that were leaked are real.

Now go read the slides, and you'll know exactly what is going on.

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