It's exactly the kind of denial you'd expect them to issue if they were legally required to deny any involvement.
Saying that denial is a lie . . . is a completely different charge.
Kind of like Mariano Rajoy insisted that Spain didn't need a bailout?
"We cannot confirm or deny the existence of such a program,"
"It is not our policy to comment on national security topics"
"No comment."
"We'll wait for the results of the investigation."
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. ;)
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 data from other programs. (b) Anyone who is actually innocent in this needs to stop mentioning "direct access to servers": no one expects this program to be directly accessing servers. (c) We also don't care whether actions were "in accordance with the law", as the constitutionality of the surrounding laws is part of the debate.
I will say that "Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false." is a good statement to make. It sounds broad in a good way and doesn't appear to have many weasel words, other than specifying "Internet activity" and not email or general activity. Are Google searches even "Internet activity", or is he referring to Google Analytics / Google +1 / 8.8.8.8 DNS?
If you're refuting claims of behavior X, it's natural to say "We don't do behavior X."
Why should we trust the safety of any information on our searches, emails, location data, chats etc stored by Google? Stop storing it
"We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible... ...we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish."
I do think Google is working hard to protect our users from unwarranted government requests. Just speaking for me personally, I really dislike provisions in the PATRIOT Act and FISA that compel secrecy. One thing I did like in Google's blog post was that we spoke out against the "level of secrecy around the current legal procedures." I was encouraged that Facebook later said something similar. In my opinion, a lot of the frustration about the current situation would be best applied to changing some laws in the United States.
While I honestly think _you_ believe Google is doing "the right thing" - there's a nagging suspicion that there's some NSL-style legal (or possibly extra-legal) compulsion being used at the very top levels. Even if I believe that Larry is 100% "on my side" against the government - I'm also under no doubt that Larry and Google are effectively powerless against the pressure the various US government agencies could apply if they so chose.
While explanations of the similarity between Larry's and Mark Z's posts based on direct rebuttal of the WaPo article are plausible, when combined with Apple's, AOL's, and Yahoo's suspiciously similar structure and wording - cynical-me can't help but wonder if all 5 CEO's are being compelled to disseminate the same government supplied message (and are possibly intentionally using almost word-for-word similar language as a plausibly deniable way of telling people that).
I'm not sure if there's much Google can say or do - given the depth and seriousness of the seeds of suspicion that've already been sown… (Having said that, I was pleased to read Yonatan's G+ post earlier today…)
http://news.cnet.com/Legal-loophole-emerges-in-NSA-spy-progr... Federal law may "authorize and in some cases require telecommunications companies to furnish information" to the executive branch, said Bradford Berenson, who was associate White House counsel when President Bush authorized the NSA surveillance program in late 2001 and is now a partner at the Sidley Austin law firm in Washington, D.C. Far from being complicit in an illegal spying scheme, Berenson said, "AT&T is essentially an innocent bystander."
And a sealed AT&T document I obtained tried to offer benign reasons why there would be a secret room at its downtown San Francisco switching center that would be designed to monitor Internet and telephone traffic: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6077353.html
What Google and Facebook are doing today is precisely the opposite of what AT&T did.
What Sergey (and Google) bravely did in China gave Google years of priceless respectability. This is one of those situations where civil disobedience is best. I realize you can't just "pull out of the United States", yet Google is looking like liars, and that just doesn't work.
For what it's worth, if Larry summoned the courage to speak his conscience completely, he will not go to jail. Far from it ... Google will be the true statesman, showing courage and leadership.
Indeed, I believe it may help Google the most, by catalyzing people's courage to do what's right. It's simply wrong to associate yourself with this.
It must come from Google first, Google is the strongest. Please consider the honor in doing this. Done genuinely, the public will rally behind Google, just like SOPA/PIPA. And don't forget, you have the world's largest bully pulpit.
Are you asking Larry to violate the law on National Security Letters, by publicly posting their content?
For what it's worth, I'd recommend reading this post: https://plus.sandbox.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/huwQsph... To me, Yonatan's post read as the sort of personal, even blunt statement that you're asking for.
I don't mind targeted surveillance against genuine suspected terrorists. What frightens me is broader intelligence collection especially commercial intelligence. Over time programs broaden and if we're not really, really careful we'll find gmail being read by intelligence analysts who can brief our US competitors.
If non-Americans can't trust Google with their information that is an existential risk to its future. I think the Google leadership needs to do a lot more than this one short post!
[1] From Obama's comments: Now, with respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States. And again, in this instance, not only is Congress fully apprised of it, but what is also true is that the FISA Court has to authorize it.
So in summary, what you’ve got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress.
That seems pretty clear - there is a congress-approved spying on non-US citizens Internet and email.
EDIT: added Obama quote
It rather makes it clear that Google is participating in espionage programs for the NSA. Supposedly, maybe, it isn't directed at Americans (har har).
The president has not, however, confirmed that the news reports about "PRISM" are accurate. All he's done is summarized the law.
This kind of language bothers me - "suspected terrorist" requires no proof at all, while sounding authoritative (65% of Americans support the remote execution by drone of 'suspected terrorists').
I know roughly what you meant, of course, but where that line is drawn is a discussion that needs to be had. I'd say that with the level of surveillance that goes on, we are all suspected terrorists now.
Compelled and limited is a very different story than voluntary, wide-scale, and direct. Do I like FISA? No, I think it sucks. FISA orders come with a gag order, and laws that compel secrecy like that should be struck down, in my opinion. But in recent days, you've heard the CEO of Google say that they haven't gotten the sort of broad requests that (say) Verizon got, and that Google can and does push back on requests that they consider too broad.
I think the proper response to this issue should be frustration with bad laws, and calling your Senator or Representative in Congress to tell them that.
I think there's a world of difference between a gag order where you are not allowed to confirm, and an order to explicitly deny involvement. I'm not saying the former is "good", but there's a difference.
I think there's a non-zero probability that there are US government agencies who can and have compelled people to explicitly deny something that they know is true.
Realistically, it would boggle my mind to discover they'd done that to all the founders/CEOs/legal departments of all the companies involved here (at least Google/Facebook/Apple/Yahoo/AOL), but given the stakes in this game - I have no doubt that it _could_ be done.
Either the government is coercing them, and they have to issue lies as denials, or they are participating voluntarily and are voluntarily lying, or they are not participating. The second option seems unlikely to me.
But at the same time they can't all be right. NSA says it's getting data in some form from Google, Page says no direct access.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle then... but where?
I just think it's important to not be entirely cynical here, and to keep in mind what such a statement might look like if it were being truthful. I don't know how much different it might be, which generally makes the statement only as good as Larry Page's word, and only then if he doesn't have a gun to his head.
If that is true, why would we expect that Google officials would be able to make any public confirmation of the Top Secret program? And, given that, why, in that case, would we expect the truth to be "in the middle"?
Conversely, if the leaked document is not genuine, then I still don't see any basis for expecting the truth to be in the "middle" between the false document and the Google denial.
You assume Google is giving the NSA information and act accordingly.
Doubts are like bothersome flies...
until they are crushed...
you will never be comfortable at your current position.
Page says no direct access and not even legal access at that scale (verizon). He doesn't say they don't have any access -- in fact he says they comply within the bounds of law, but it's not at the Verizon scale.
On one hand, I would think a very-visible CEO of a major corp would keep their name off of a press release, if the press release was a lie that they were compelled to tell by the government.
On the other hand, I feel like each company's response and their use of the exact same terminology ("direct access", etc) feels like a wink and a nod.
If I was going to go completely conspiracy-nutter, I'd say that Page has been kept out of the loop intentionally for plausible deniability, and the actual incursion happens at a much lower level, where the people involved are coerced into keeping their mouths shut. That way, the bigwigs get to tell what they think is the truth, the NSA gets their data, and nobody is the wiser.
Granted, I think that belongs more in the plot of a thriller novel than in this actual world we're living in, but given the revelations of the past couple of days, fiction doesn't seem that implausible.
"A US government-mandated backdoor allowed China to hack into Gmail"
"In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access."
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hackin...
Maybe those hackers just used the regular tech support "back door", as in "SELECT * FROM gmail where email = 'target@gmail.com'
Their business is based on user's data. If you do not feel comfortable giving them your data, it might hurt their business. Hence, IMHO, they do have some incentive to deny PRISM, regardless of the facts.
It's the opposite of what Larry Page is doing.
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.
They probably want to confirm it, but in a completely open and transparent way that assures people there's nothing they should fear here, which they can't do because it's all cloaked in secrecy.
Now, I'm not so naive to think that if someone tried this, the government and courts would just say "Herp, derp, you sure outfoxed us there!" But has that strategy ever been tested in court?
http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
And they note:
This scheme is not infallible. Although signing the declaration makes it impossible for a third party to produce arbitrary declarations, it does not prevent them from using force to coerce rsync.net to produce false declarations. The news clip in the signed message serves to demonstrate that that update could not have been created prior to that date. It shows that a series of these updates were not created in advance and posted on this page.