Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM • Hacker News Board

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#211

Post by Domenic_S » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 12:39 AM UTC

dkulchenko wrote: post #23

Look at the two writeups (Zuckerberg's and Page's) side by side. Each has 4 paragraphs. Each of the pairs of paragraphs addresses the same thing. 1st paragraph: we wanted to respond to these claims. 2nd paragraph: never heard of PRISM, don't give direct access. 3rd paragraph: each request goes through legal channels. 4th paragraph: encourage governments to be more transparent. Terrifying. EDIT: It gets worse. Here's…

You're getting a lot of flak, but I immediately noticed the same thing.

Google: "we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers"

FB: "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers."

Google: "We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday."

FB: "We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday."

Google: "there needs to be a more transparent approach."

FB: "governments to be much more transparent about all programs"

Call me nutty, but this can't be coincidence.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#212

Post by taktix » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 12:47 AM UTC

arange wrote: post #204

Dove wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not impressed. Most press releases have only a handful of paragraphs. I'd believe it was common to go over the topics of "What We're Talking About, What We Deny, What We Affirm, and How It Could Be Better." It may look impressive that they all say they don't allow "direct access to servers", but it's hardly surprising, since the original Guardian headline[1] was "Top-secret Prism program claims direct access to s…

or all these companies are intentionally making similar press releases in hopes people will catch on that theyre being coerced into denying involvement. this way they're (assuming they have one) fulfilling their denial obligation with the NSA, yet still are protesting what they dont actually want to be doing

Yes. The uniformity of their responses is too similar to ignore or dismiss. It's chilling to read. It's a big fat hint to anyone not already drunk on the kool-aid that the NSA is coercing them to lie.

They couldn't say it louder if they used a bullhorn.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#213

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 12:49 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #123

dkulchenko wrote: post #23

Look at the two writeups (Zuckerberg's and Page's) side by side. Each has 4 paragraphs. Each of the pairs of paragraphs addresses the same thing. 1st paragraph: we wanted to respond to these claims. 2nd paragraph: never heard of PRISM, don't give direct access. 3rd paragraph: each request goes through legal channels. 4th paragraph: encourage governments to be more transparent. Terrifying. EDIT: It gets worse. Here's…

The implication that there is some central figure behind this giving these companies scripts to read meets the most common flaw of governmental conspiracy theories. It requires the government to be simultaneously incredibly competent and incompetent. If the NSA was able to keep this project under wraps for so long with the number of people involved, I think they would be smart enough to at least slightly alter the wo…

> The implication that there is some central figure behind this giving these companies scripts to read meets the most common flaw of governmental conspiracy theories.

Oh come on. We all know that it's Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD that's doing this. "This isn't my first rodeo," he said.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#214

Post by brown9-2 » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 12:50 AM UTC

frisco wrote: post #70

I'm now just confused. If I understand it correctly, the government has publicly acknowledged the program and tried to explain how it's "limited and legal," but extant nonetheless. Now the companies are all uniformly denying it. The options: - The companies are lying. - The government has infiltrated these companies and developed backdoor access the executive team is unaware of. - The government is intercepting traff…

Marc Ambinder, a well-respected national security journalist who literally wrote the book on this topic, speculated (or perhaps stated what his sources have told him) how this could work on Twitter earlier tonight. Buzzfeed recapped it here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/direct-access-is-the-defin...

> On the “no direct access” —ISPs push to a separate server the subset of accounts that the FISC order covers; NSA monitors them in real time

> Let’s say court order says “all Yahoo accounts in Pakistan” Yahoo would push those accounts to the server; NSA could watch them in real time

>They’d try & figure who & where the incoming emails were coming from. US persons data minimized automatically if possible (often it’s not).

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#215

Post by Dn_Ab » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 12:52 AM UTC

dkulchenko wrote: post #23

Look at the two writeups (Zuckerberg's and Page's) side by side. Each has 4 paragraphs. Each of the pairs of paragraphs addresses the same thing. 1st paragraph: we wanted to respond to these claims. 2nd paragraph: never heard of PRISM, don't give direct access. 3rd paragraph: each request goes through legal channels. 4th paragraph: encourage governments to be more transparent. Terrifying. EDIT: It gets worse. Here's…

I call convergent evolution on this one. A convex optimization problem. It's the simplest explanation. They need a broadly accessible response, so that gives like what 2000 words? By the time you account for the various pits of contradiction, handwash to some sufficiently nebulous concept of indirect access; all while the government breathes down your back, the outraged crowd bustles for explanations and a gaggle of lawyers dog your every step like a herd of bumper cars, you have basically 6 or 7 words left in your vocabulary and only one way to string them into a sentence. Before proceeding to inflate into paragraphs from a very limited palette of legalese sanctioned fluff.

The collusion/double speak/poppeteering or game theoretic layered messaging within a secretly orchestrated gag conspiracy are plausible but I'd prefer to wait for more evidence before I accept Facebook and Google are complicit or prisoners to that. That doesn't mean I think they are either of them blindingly righteous beacons of morality (or even chipped and dulled pyrite morality for that matter), just that the implications of the scenario (democracy canceled xor executives willfully distorting the donut of truth into a mug) are hard to believe.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#216

Post by xeper » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 12:59 AM UTC

dkulchenko wrote: post #23

Look at the two writeups (Zuckerberg's and Page's) side by side. Each has 4 paragraphs. Each of the pairs of paragraphs addresses the same thing. 1st paragraph: we wanted to respond to these claims. 2nd paragraph: never heard of PRISM, don't give direct access. 3rd paragraph: each request goes through legal channels. 4th paragraph: encourage governments to be more transparent. Terrifying. EDIT: It gets worse. Here's…

Oh noes, it's a conspiracy!

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#217

Post by spydum » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 1:00 AM UTC

If you want to go full conspiracy theorist, you might suggest the slide deck and capabilities were all a psy-ops tactic to persuade the real criminals to abandon using google,Facebook,apple, and all of the big corps who refused to freely hand over user data, and instead flee to smaller businesses that the government could much more easily coerce into participating...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#218

Post by ianmcgowan » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 1:01 AM UTC

It does seem as though these companies are trying to signal something (a la cryptonomicon), by the repeated emphasis on direct. That's the part that is scary - as someone else pointed out, with the right SSL keys and a copy of the bytes flowing thru a limited number of NAP's, you don't need your grubby fingers in the google/facebook datacenters. The telcom's seem quite willing to roll over...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#219

Post by onestone » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 1:09 AM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #122

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say MITM. I said redirecting/copying traffic to spy on it.

Without the key, they couldn't read it. Getting a CA on board doesn't give them that (that would only allow them to create an alternative key that software without pinning would accept), they would need to either be given the key by anyone that had it or factor it themselves.

The private key should not be that hard to obtain. Google has thousands of frontend servers, each one of them has to have the SSL private key (at least in memory). Probably at least a hundred people have access to these servers. It's enough to bribe just one of them.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM

#220

Post by collypops » Sat, Jun 08, 2013, 1:12 AM UTC

dkulchenko wrote: post #23

Look at the two writeups (Zuckerberg's and Page's) side by side. Each has 4 paragraphs. Each of the pairs of paragraphs addresses the same thing. 1st paragraph: we wanted to respond to these claims. 2nd paragraph: never heard of PRISM, don't give direct access. 3rd paragraph: each request goes through legal channels. 4th paragraph: encourage governments to be more transparent. Terrifying. EDIT: It gets worse. Here's…

Need a generic PRISM involvement denial statement? Well you're in luck:

http://colingourlay.github.io/deny-prism