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Larry Page addresses PRISM

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Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#371

Post by jjtheblunt »

camus wrote: post #273
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…

they are required, by the law, to deny any involvment with the NSA anyway or they can go straight in jail.

Citation of such law?

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#372

Post by Matt_Cutts »

solnyshok wrote: post #305
ynniv wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better carefully worded response is still a carefully worded response. Google is in a difficult place because we all expected this to be happening, there are now documents suggesting that it has been happening, and no one takes at face value anything that sounds like a lawyer wrote it. EDIT: I mean: (a) No one cares if they have heard about a program called "PRISM" when the point of that program is to aggregate dat…

"direct access to servers" looks suspicios to me as well. However, maybe several dozen lawyers had no clue how to react today, and they just copied one another's text?

More likely: the first paragraph from the Guardian and the Washington Post both emphasized "direct" access. See the picture here: http://cl.ly/image/2S3i1g2W2R2k

If you're refuting claims of behavior X, it's natural to say "We don't do behavior X."

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#373

Post by zmmmmm »

It's disturbing how similar the language of the different denials is. While individually they are quite convincing (to me, anyway), when you read them one after the other they all have the same "voice". It starts to sound like Orwellian newspeak, exactly how it would sound if all these statements were coordinated by a shadowy background figure.

It may be just an unfortunate coincidence of timing and nature of lawyer laden executive language - but together these statements almost become counterproductive.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#374

Post by sullivandanny »

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.

No, it's not. What little we've had about super-secret legal requests isn't that companies have to lie about them. It's that they can't acknowledge them at all.

So the answer they give when asked, and they do get asked, is "no comment."

If they were voluntarily part of PRISM, and legally required to keep that quiet, I'd expect them to say "no comment."

Doing the opposite make so little sense. It means they're having to flat-out lie to their users, something very hard to recover from.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#375

Post by thebordella »

stinkytaco wrote: post #193
boi_v2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I guess he will have to find a proper way to prove it, because if you are satisfied with just a blog post maybe you should think again.

I'm curious why we're satisfied with an anonymous leaker and some shoddy looking powerpoints. I'm not going to comment on what's true or what's not, but I know a few things: 1. Having been "in the news" or when I've had firsthand knowledge of an event in the news, I'm always shocked by how inaccurate the news is. Usually not in broad strokes, but in lots of details. I have learned to take everything I read in the med…

Many times this.

Do you all remember when the "news" was "leaked" by "anonymous hackers" who claimed to lift Apple user data from a hacked FBI laptop? The Internet lost its mind frothing against the surveillance state.

The minority of critical thinkers who suggested that maybe the claims of anonymous hackers shouldn't be taken entirely at face value were either ignored or shouted down. Blanket denials by the FBI were met with retorts of "we know they're lying!". News outlets -- many the very same covering the PRISM story -- repeated uncritically the accusations of the FBI harvesting Apple user data.

Do you all remember what the actual outcome of that story was? Spoiler alert: the allegations were grade-A bullshit. The only part that was true was that it involved (old) data lifted from a hack (against an app developer). Everything else was bogus self-aggrandizing, and the Internet loudmouths played right into it. Why? Because it confirmed people's existing fears.

The sad reality is that everything that has hit the news about this PRISM story -- and the Verizon story -- has actually shed very little light on anything. We have a source with unknown credibility providing incomplete and possibly even misunderstood information colliding with large corporate and government interests. Maybe everyone is lying. Maybe nobody is.

The only thing that is certain is that people unquestionably believe claims that confirm their existing beliefs.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#376

Post by adventured »

With Clapper's admission that Prism is real, I don't understand why it's still a debate as to whether Google / Facebook / Microsoft / Apple are involved.

What Internet companies are they getting information from, such that they wouldn't target the top dozen companies that account for the radical majority of anything you'd want to bother tapping into? Who do people think they're talking about? Excite? Some small local ISP?

They got Verizon and AT&T to sign on to massive scale spying. If they can do that, they can get Google and Facebook and so on. These companies simply have no choice in the matter. You'll recall that Google's anti-trust inquiry recently, conveniently, went away with barely a slap on the wrist.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#377

Post by bloaf »

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 would like this:

The only requests for information to which we respond are requests that contain the full name(s) of the people whose data is requested.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#378

Post by eightyone »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #371
camus wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are required, by the law, to deny any involvment with the NSA anyway or they can go straight in jail.

Citation of such law?

It's a part of the Patriot Act. This is from a Wikipedia article on a warrant canary, which is a clever method devised to alert customers of such warrants indirectly. [1]

> Such subpoenas, including those covered under the USA Patriot Act, provide criminal penalties for revealing the existence of the warrant to any third party, including the service provider's customers.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#379

Post by adventured »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #89
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.

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…

The NSA wouldn't be storing all the photos or videos from Facebook. Storing text is trivial compared to that.

If you reduced Facebook's storage demands down to always static text, I think there's little doubt you could eliminate over 90% of their storage requirements (I'd say closer to 97%). And that's without any kind of compression.

Re: Larry Page addresses PRISM

#380

Post by bigiain »

macchina wrote: post #346
gibsonf1 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key issue here is that Google and the other companies may have no idea this is going on. My read is that the NSA has managed to gain access to the data centers either through inside help, spy craft, hardware/router back doors, or some other means we have no idea about.

It's hard for me to believe they could access to the data centers without Google's knowledge. Isn't it more plausible that they're intercepting data flowing in and out of Google servers?

Hmmm…

We haven't seen posts from the CEOs of Cisco/Juniper/Dell/HP or other manufacturers of datacenter grade network equipment. Who needs Google/Facebook's "knowledge" if you've got root on all the border network gear (and SSL termination hardware)?

I know here in .au, Huawei have been excluded from the government-deployed National Broadband Network due to suspicions that the Chinese government has too much control/access to Huawei newtwork hardware.

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