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Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#21

Post by magicalist »

sarciszewski wrote: post #9
benlower wrote: post #7

(Any lawyers here who could weigh in?) Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their correspondence on their website? For example, AcmeCo gets a request from the US Government to share information about one of AcmeCo's customers (e.g. WikiLeaks). AcmeCo scans and posts this letter (as it does for everything it receives including its electricity bill) on its website. Could they then circu…

"Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their correspondence on their website?" Not a US-based company, because we have these nefarious things called National Security Letters. The penalty for knowingly breaking the gag order with the intent to interfere with an investigation is up to five years in prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter Do you know any business o…

Just to be clear, this case (or this particular gag order for this case, at least) had nothing to do with National Security Letters. It was a gag order from a regular federal judge.

The answer to the above is still no, however. I don't see how "I post everything I receive" could possibly get you out of "don't post this warrant".

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#22

Post by mindslight »

No Google, "fighting" a restriction on speech isn't doing exactly what you're told and asking a corrupt court for permission to do otherwise. It involves loudly publicizing the corruption and giving the thugs an uphill battle. Until you do this (or radically change your products to be oblivious to users' information in the first place), you're a de facto arm of the surveillance state.

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#23

Post by fixermark »

ForHackernews wrote: post #19
sarciszewski wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA was also wiretapping the connections between Google's datacenters, so they were victims of the NSA too. (Until we know more about their relationship with the NSA, I also don't condemn them for the PRISM allegations.)

I acknowledge there's a moral and ethical distinction there, but I dispute that there's any pragmatic difference: If you use Google services, your data is compromised, period. It doesn't really matter whether the NSA or GCHQ are tapping Google's datacenters, paying off low-level employees, operating under a legal court order, or benefiting from the enthusiastic help of Google executives. The end result is the same: Y…

The question has never been "Can you trust cloud services?"

It's "Can you trust them more than the alternatives?"

Yes, you can almost certainly keep your private data more secure in a system you build and monitor yourself(1). Until an NSA or GCHQ-level entity takes interest in you, and uses a 0-day exploit on your system or just physically walks in with a warrant and steals your physical media. How is that functionally different from "If the NSA / GCHQ takes interest in you, they can have the cloud service provider hand your data over?" And that's before you add the overhead of maintaining, securing, and physically protecting your own systems.

(1) Note that even this step is a huge hurdle for most people; "You cannot trust cloud services" basically tells those people "Don't use the Internet."

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#24

Post by mindslight »

saalweachter wrote: post #17
sarciszewski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their correspondence on their website?" Not a US-based company, because we have these nefarious things called National Security Letters. The penalty for knowingly breaking the gag order with the intent to interfere with an investigation is up to five years in prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter Do you know any business o…

Not to be, ah, subversive, but do you necessarily need business owners willing to go to jail, or business owners willing to employee willing martyrs? Imagine you hire a number of people who happen to be willing to go to jail for their principles, who are strongly opposed to things like government secrecy, and put them in the line to handle a NSL. If they happen to violate a gag order and go to jail, well, you may hav…

"Conspiracy".

There really is no prevailing over the legal tarpit - even if your action technically passes, they get you on intent or association. The only time logic really comes into play is writing post-hoc justification of the status quo. The more corrupt "laws" created, the easier such justification becomes.

(PS. given that authoritarianism is creeping in on many fronts, everybody who cares about these issues should be looking for ways to be subversive. embracing one front in an attempt to outrun the others is a losing strategy)

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#25

Post by throwaway2048 »

fixermark wrote: post #23
ForHackernews wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I acknowledge there's a moral and ethical distinction there, but I dispute that there's any pragmatic difference: If you use Google services, your data is compromised, period. It doesn't really matter whether the NSA or GCHQ are tapping Google's datacenters, paying off low-level employees, operating under a legal court order, or benefiting from the enthusiastic help of Google executives. The end result is the same: Y…

The question has never been "Can you trust cloud services?" It's "Can you trust them more than the alternatives?" Yes, you can almost certainly keep your private data more secure in a system you build and monitor yourself(1). Until an NSA or GCHQ-level entity takes interest in you, and uses a 0-day exploit on your system or just physically walks in with a warrant and steals your physical media. How is that functional…

There is a massive, massive difference between automatically slurping all data coming in and out of a cloud provider, and going after somebody with a targeted exploit or physically seizing machines.

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#26

Post by paulhauggis »

kwagmeyer wrote: post #3

Google was a premium partner in the Prysm NSA program. According to the first leaks, Google along with Facebook, Skype and Apple were the first to sign up to the NSA spying programs as partners. All along they're trying to paint themselves as victims of the spying, which is ridiculous really...but I guess they can still fool a large population.

You're getting down voted because of all the Google, Facebook, and Apple employees here on HN.

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#27

Post by us0r »

ForHackernews wrote: post #20
sarciszewski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their correspondence on their website?" Not a US-based company, because we have these nefarious things called National Security Letters. The penalty for knowingly breaking the gag order with the intent to interfere with an investigation is up to five years in prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter Do you know any business o…

> Do you know any business owners willing to go to prison for five years for one of their users? The Lavabit guy came pretty close, IIRC, and he's a small fry. Do you really think the government would jail the wealthy executives of Google or Microsoft? They won't even prosecute Wall Street executives, and bankers are far less popular with the public than tech CEOs.

"Do you really think the government would jail the wealthy executives of Google or Microsoft"

They can, they have and they will. Look up Joseph Nacchio.

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#28

Post by Zigurd »

sarciszewski wrote: post #8
kwagmeyer wrote: post #3

Google was a premium partner in the Prysm NSA program. According to the first leaks, Google along with Facebook, Skype and Apple were the first to sign up to the NSA spying programs as partners. All along they're trying to paint themselves as victims of the spying, which is ridiculous really...but I guess they can still fool a large population.

The NSA was also wiretapping the connections between Google's datacenters, so they were victims of the NSA too. (Until we know more about their relationship with the NSA, I also don't condemn them for the PRISM allegations.)

The answer CAN be "all of the above." Just because the NSA went beyond any agreement they may have with Google, and Google is genuinely pissed off about that, doesn't mean Google (or any other major technology company in the US) hasn't cooperated with the government regarding surveillance.

It is certain that telecom carriers participated willingly in the massive collection of telephone network CDRs from way back when these were on mag tape.

So far, every time someone has asked "What if the government is using X for surveillance?" the answer has eventually been yes. 100% of the time. Nothing is out of bounds. And that includes making partners victims if it is part of the mission to collect everything. Belgium, for example, is both a partner, somewhere in the hierarchy of partners outside of the Five Eyes, and a victim of GCHQ hacking. Being a partner doesn't spare you and being a victim isn't indicative you're not a partner.

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#29

Post by [deleted] »

fixermark wrote: post #23
ForHackernews wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I acknowledge there's a moral and ethical distinction there, but I dispute that there's any pragmatic difference: If you use Google services, your data is compromised, period. It doesn't really matter whether the NSA or GCHQ are tapping Google's datacenters, paying off low-level employees, operating under a legal court order, or benefiting from the enthusiastic help of Google executives. The end result is the same: Y…

The question has never been "Can you trust cloud services?" It's "Can you trust them more than the alternatives?" Yes, you can almost certainly keep your private data more secure in a system you build and monitor yourself(1). Until an NSA or GCHQ-level entity takes interest in you, and uses a 0-day exploit on your system or just physically walks in with a warrant and steals your physical media. How is that functional…

[deleted]

Re: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

#30

Post by nitrogen »

ForHackernews wrote: post #20
sarciszewski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their correspondence on their website?" Not a US-based company, because we have these nefarious things called National Security Letters. The penalty for knowingly breaking the gag order with the intent to interfere with an investigation is up to five years in prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter Do you know any business o…

> Do you know any business owners willing to go to prison for five years for one of their users? The Lavabit guy came pretty close, IIRC, and he's a small fry. Do you really think the government would jail the wealthy executives of Google or Microsoft? They won't even prosecute Wall Street executives, and bankers are far less popular with the public than tech CEOs.

Joseph Nacchio was ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio ).
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