Tech companies, bristling, concede to government surveillance program
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
In the grand scheme of things, the attacks themselves caused minimal damage and casualties. We're only talking about ~3,000 deaths and ~$30 billion damage.
But look at the aftermath. The Iraq War itself cost the USA $5 trillion, and another ~4,500 lives (American lives, that is. The total number of casualties is well over 100,000). At home, the PATRIOT Act enabled countless breaches of freedom, and the TSA has cost untold number of hours wasted at airports. And now this NSA bullshit.
All of this is beyond Osama bin Laden's wildest dreams. The guy just organized a couple of airplanes to be rammed into the WTC towers. Heck, he didn't even expect them to go down, and was pleasantly surprised when it happened. In light of all the freedoms America lost since then though, he must be dancing in his grave right now.
McCarthy wrote a book arguing that the Soviet Union was the real winner of WWII[7], thanks to the help of willing US accomplices. Looking at the map of Europe before and after the war you have to admit the guy has a case. But who would read a book by Joseph McCarthy?
[1] http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/harry-dexter-white/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Silvermaster
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlo_group
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Rosenberg
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers
[7] http://foseti.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/review-of-americas-re...;
The government argued that the Communist Party USA had no right to spread political ideas in the US, and targetted lawyers who dared to defend them.
Whatever the extent of Soviet spying in the US (and it would have been extensive for obvious reasons, as with the other side), the McCarthy era was an assault on the foundations of democracy in this country. If you want to justify that because the threat is real, I suppose we should just give up on this whole Constitutional Rights thing....
Violence is a nasty thing. But violence in service of slavery is a far nastier thing than violence in defense of human rights and freedoms.
Could you provide a bit more information on this - who was jailed solely for distributing the works of Karl Marx and for how long?
Read Yates v. United States. The conviction was reversed and it brought an end to Smith Act prosecutions of the Communist Party.
Decision at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0354...
Oral argument at: http://www.oyez.org/cases/1950-1959/1956/1956_6
Yates also largely overruled Whitney v. California (and set up the formal overrule in Brandenburg). It is worth noting however that although the Supreme Court (this was decades before Yates) held that Communist Party membership itself could be subject to prosecution, Brandeis's concurrence apparently lead the governor of the state to pardon Whitney.
It's very much like the folks who insist they should never get into a relationship because they might get hurt, or never found a startup because it might fail. That's the point. We choose to live with that vulnerability because it makes the moments where it doesn't fail so much sweeter.
By the time HUAC came around, actually, the reasons to take the fifth were quite well developed. Additionally he had helped someone come up with a strategy of refusing to answer questions without an appointed attorney present which had the effect of getting a lot of lawyers who weren't even necessarily civil libertarians thrust into the front lines. The result was that Canwell lost re-election. This was before HUAC even got formed.
You have a point about McCarthy but only from a different direction. McCarthy was an exponent of what was going on. He did not turn America into anything. He was just the final wave.
We do have McCarthy to thank however for the great free speech protections we enjoy in our nation. It was due to his overreaches that the court ruled that spreading the Communist ideology was protected under the 1st Amendment unless one actually went so far as to try to raise an army to violently rebel (the case was Yates v. United States).
The great irony was that whatever McCarthy's lust for power or his intentions, he succeeded in showing the court why Communists had to have civil liberties too and perhaps turned the US into something better, very much despite his best efforts.
Looks like this person made a career on defending the worst of the worst. The article - which is no wonder - tries to paint it in ligher tones by saying communists and BPP were "prosecuted for radical beliefs" - but we all know it went way, way beyond mere beliefs there. Still, of course, maintaining legal representation even to the worst of the worst is the important part of the due process, so I guess he has a place in the picture too. Though I'm not sure if we heard about a guy who defends the right of local Al Qaeda group to hold meetings in your local civic center, we'd think "he's the hero of our time", even recognizing their right for legal representation.
As for the practice of taking the Fifth, I can appreciate that people associating with organisation with official goal of overthrowing US government and which is financed and directed by Joseph Stalin would feel the need of some defensive tactics when the same government their organisation is trying to overthrow comes in and asks questions. I can also appreciate they may think it was unfair that they suffered some serious problems due to their association with the CP, but think about it - would you want a known Al Qaeda member to be in charge of the gas lines in your city, for example? Yes, he personally never did anything wrong except being publicly in support of Al Qaeda and their actions, which is not a crime, so would you be OK with him in this position or would you demand him to be replaced?
> Still, of course, maintaining legal representation even to the worst of the worst is the important part of the due process, so I guess he has a place in the picture too.
Sure, and defending such rights at the cost of one's job and even being kicked out of the ACLU when the ACLU didn't want to touch the issue requires a certain degree of courage.
> As for the practice of taking the Fifth, I can appreciate that people associating with organisation with official goal of overthrowing US government and which is financed and directed by Joseph Stalin would feel the need of some defensive tactics when the same government their organisation is trying to overthrow comes in and asks questions.
Taking the 5th started after people were prosecuted for refusing to testify before the state legislature in Washington State.
But a goal in the abstract is just a political belief. It is not until it is paired with concrete steps to make it happen that it is actionable. This is what Yates turned on, unless you think the Supreme Court in Yates got it wrong and the Smith Act never should have been castrated.
But if the Communist Party's goal in the abstract of overthrow of our government at some indefinite point in the future makes them illegal, then surely the National Rifle Association's view that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of the people to rebel violently against the government would be illegal too, is it not? There is not much difference between "things are such that at some point we will have to take over the country by violent revolution if necessary" and "this provision of the Constitution is to ensure that if and when the government overreaches, we can exercise our duty and take over the country by violent revolution if necessary." Drawing a line between the CP and the NRA is surprisingly difficult.
I want to underscore this by saying one of my most memorable conversations with John was about gun control back in the early 1990's and I thought it was interesting that he made the arguments almost exactly that the Supreme Court accepted in Heller years later.
My question to you is whether you think the Supreme Court got it wrong in Yates v. United States, when it held that arguing for actions in the abstract with no tangible steps to make it happen was fully protected under the first amendment even when it came to advocating the moral desirability of violent overthrow of the government. Maybe you think that was wrong and the NRA should tone down their rhetoric too. After all the "cold dead hands" mantra is a threat to rebel if sufficient gun control laws are enforced.
Membership in CPUSA per se is not illegal. However, membership in this organisation may very well make the member unfit for employment both in the eyes of the government and in the eyes of his peers. Membership in Stormfront or KKK today in not illegal either, but I think you'd want to know if somebody in the government was a member.
>>>> Drawing a line between the CP and the NRA is surprisingly difficult.
Not difficult at all. NRA never been controlled by a totalitarian state led by the homicidal dictator, never performed mass massacres, never advocated totalitarian restrictions of human rights, never facilitated transfer of top secret defense information to the hands of the enemy. How hard is that?
>>>> My question to you is whether you think the Supreme Court got it wrong in Yates v. United States
No, I think they were absolutely right - people have the right to proclaim any crazy stuff they want, as long as it is not organizing and facilitating actual violence, it is protected by the 1st amendment. However, that does not mean advocating these crazy things would not have consequences for those people beyond governmental prosecution (or rather absence of it) for the speech. If you are advocating crazy stuff, be prepared that people would not want to associate with you or hire you.
>>>> After all the "cold dead hands" mantra is a threat to rebel if sufficient gun control laws are enforced.
If "sufficient control laws" - i.e. laws that violate the US Constitution and human rights - are being enforced, what one has left to do? Flee, submit or fight. It has nothing to do, however, with communist actions - they weren't some Tea Party activists going too far. Only use they had for the constitution was when it protected them personally, but if they ever succeeded, all constitution right were to be abolished immediately - look at any communist state.
In fact membership in the KKK was held to be Constitutionally protected specifically because membership in the Communist Party had become protected. Remember that Brandenburg (can't prosecute for KKK membership or for shouting "Kill the niggers... we intend to do our part," quoted from majority opinion footnote 1, at a KKK rally) overturned Whitney v. California, a 1920's precedent allowing prosecution for mere Communist Party membership.
> Membership in CPUSA per se is not illegal.
Yes it was. Look at the portions of the Yates indictment from the Supreme Court's syllabus. The Smith Act prohibited among other things organizing groups which advocated overthrow of the United States government and that was essentially what Yates was charged with.
You talk about taking the 5th but keep in mind that people were being prosecuted and thrown in jail for advocating Marxist ideas. In such, taking the 5th was perfectly legitimate.
> Not difficult at all. NRA never been controlled by a totalitarian state led by the homicidal dictator, never performed mass massacres, never advocated totalitarian restrictions of human rights, never facilitated transfer of top secret defense information to the hands of the enemy. How hard is that?
I meant a line regarding Constitutional liberty. I am sorry if I was unclear. I think you agree with me on that, given that you say the Supreme Court got it right in Yates so this is probably just a miscommunication.
As far as non-criminal matters, it is worth noting that the Supreme Court struck down prosecutions for people refusing to testify before HUAC at the same time Yates was decided in Watkins v. United States, ruling that Congress's power of investigation was limited to legitimate goals of Congress (see http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vo...), and overturning a misdemeanor conviction of contempt of congress for someone refusing to answer certain questions before HUAC.
> Flee, submit or fight. It has nothing to do, however, with communist actions - they weren't some Tea Party activists going too far.
My point is that where statute and Constitution are at issue the same lines would probably apply to both, and so the protections of one protect the other too.
Sounds about right.
Mussolini said: "Fascism, sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center ... These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don't give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words"
Quoting Robert Paxton's "The Anatomy of Fascism": facism is "... a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
McCarthy was obsessed with "The Red Menace", and was willing to abandon just about any ethical or legal constraint to both cleanse the United States, and to spread his idea of Americanism.
He enlisted industry, traditional elites, and whatever political support he could find his obsessive pursuit of cleansing the US of communism (and homosexuality).
What's especially scary is that you write off his wholesale destruction of careers and lives as an ethically justified approach to the problems of the Cold War (and his problems with homosexuality), despite the tactics baring a striking similarity to the CCCP's enforcement of party politics through social, commercial, and direct governmental intimidation.
We're lucky that McCarthy was never truly unleashed on the Red Menace; your implied support of him and his tactics is abhorrent.
>>> He enlisted industry, traditional elites, and whatever political support he could find
Unlike any politician with the cause, which never ever uses industry, elites and other political support. I didn't know we are practically surrounded with fascists - our whole government is composed of fascists, almost everybody relies to support of the industry, elites and political groups affiliated with their causes! You opened my eyes!
>>> What's especially scary is that you write off his wholesale destruction of careers
I do not "write off" anything. I explain that if the person is a voluntary member of a totalitarian organisation headed by a violent dictator Joseph Stalin, organisation which murdered millions in its home country, drowned multiple countries in blood and caused uncountable deaths and suffering all over the globe, and currently is actively engaged in both hot and covert war with the US - I can understand if some people do not want to entrust sensitive positions to the judgement of such people. Either these people are not of the sound mind, or their personal goals are not aligned, mildly speaking, with something that the rest of Americans would want to happen. If you think not wishing to associate with such people is morally reprehensible, you may want to seek friendship with some KKK or White Pride or Westboro Baptist Church members, but my ethics says these are not the people I'd like to be anywhere near them.
>>> despite the tactics baring a striking similarity to the CCCP's enforcement of party politics
Surely, that's exactly how it happened in the USSR - if somebody was found working for foreign organisation bent on overthrowing communists, he was asked nicely if it is true, and after he refused to answer the worst could happen to him was losing his job, after which he would either just find another one or live off public assistance. This system is exactly what is widely known as GULAG. True story, bro.
Ideals take time and perseverance...thank goodness for organizations like the ACLU and the EFF
Well, looking at the number of prisoners we have, and the atrocious way we treat them, I don't think that part has changed very much, except in scale.
As of 2009 "The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world."
"The United States' incarceration rate is, according to 2009 figures, 743 persons imprisoned per 100,000 (as of 2009). The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Slavery is straight up legal in America if you first secure a conviction. Anyone who pretends to themselves that we are not still openly using slave labor is absolutely delusional.
For lower classes, prison (and prison servitude) is becoming the safety net.
True that.
> tptacek's assertion that we should strive to be less ahistorical when assessing the current status quo.
We != people. We = Government, I believe. The Government should be less ahistorical in their workings and policy-making. Prevention of terror attacks, cold war logic is exactly the kind of argument that is outdated.
[Edits: Text]
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
1. Nixon signed the Banking Secrecy Act requiring banks to report suspicious transactions to the Treasury Department to fight organized crime. This was held to be Constitutional in California Bankers Association vs. Shultz.
2. Carter signed FISA, in a bid to contain Nixon-era domestic wiretapping. Under Carter you also see the rise of FBI Swat teams and expansion from there to local police forces.
3. Reagan asks for and gets a drug exception to Posse Comitatus, allowing the military to be directly involved in enforcing domestic narcotics law. Reagan also expands on Carter's SWAT programs by forming the outright military arm of the FBI known as the Hostage Rescue Team (involved in both Waco and Ruby Ridge, working aside the military in both cases under the drug exception to Posse Comitatus).
4. Clinton asks for and gets the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which provides for most of what was in the USAPATRIOT Act. Clinton Asks for the rest and a bill written by Biden fails to pass. Clinton also asked for a terrorism exception to Posse Comitatus and this also failed to pass Congress.
5. Bush, in the wake of 9/11, signs the USAPATRIOT Act into law, and embarks on Nixonesque wiretapping of Americans. Seeks to hold Americans without trial.
6. Obama sucedes in getting the Bush-era wiretaps legalized, and argues that Americans suspected of being in terrorist organizations can be killed anywhere in the world without trial.
The point is that 9/11 was not a tipping point. It was not what destroyed this nation. This has been going on for a long time. It just started to be thrust into public discussion after 9/11.
I am both optimistic and pessimistic on this. On one hand, we are losing what we need in order to recover this country, as the economics and politics are deeply interconnected. On the other hand, at least we are having the discussion which we were not having to the same extent under Clinton or Reagan.
The Iraq War was a terrible blunder, but it pales in comparison to Vietnam, which inflicted horrible costs on the US but even worse costs on the Vietnamese and Cambodian people, whose civilian populations were carpet bombed with napalm.
No plan survives first contact with the enemy. Speaking of which, if you're really ready to engage with the 20th Century, imagine what would have happened had the Soviets "won". Read about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
It will be another 100 years, at least, until we're no longer feeling the immediate aftershocks of colonialism.
I don't have a specific position that I'm defending. I'm trying to learn some more historical perspective, and to understand your political philosophy in general.
In that contest, 20 years is the single beat of a heart. 20 years ago, the media was entirely controlled by a handful of corporations, and you had no means whatsoever of telling an audience as large as the one you have now that you think America died on 9/11.
Say you want to make the NSA drama especially bad for Obama, and assert that the worst of their snooping is just a couple years old. A couple years. Just a few neurons have fired in that interval. Maybe wait for a few more before we rush to judgement at a world historical scale.
In world historical terms, yes. But not in US historical terms, which is what matters here.
You may actually be right, depending on when you were born. If you were born in the 80s, then things weren't too bad (unless you were a homosexual or other estranged group, of course). I think tptacek is reasonable to counter that, a decade or two earlier, things were noticeably worse than they were now. That's not to say that he's justifying what's going on now with "well, this is fine, because Vietnam was way worse".
You know who else thinks that the current period of time is absolutely the scariest, most dangerous time in American history? The kind of politicians who enact the laws that you are opposing.
This being said one thing that really differentiated Iraq from Vietnam was that when backed into a corner, Bush had one of his few shining moments as President when he tied the troop surge to political reforms aimed at a more inclusive Iraqi government. One of the problems in Vietnam was that we were so used to propping up despots we were unwilling to confront Diem on issues of governance. At least Bush learned from that lesson albeit late and with his back to the wall (and I think further it is pretty damning that Bush's finest moment was one that merely managed to contain a mess he created).
What it looks like a hundred years from now is something nobody can make a reasonable stab at. Chances are that by then this has healed and gotten better, chances are that it will get much worse.
"This too shall pass" applies forever, and countries have been born and have disintegrated long before they managed to achieve their goals.
You think terrorists drove us mad with fear, try actually reading some of the history of the 20th century and imagine what we would have done, in an era before our modern feeling of entitlement to privacy and to open dissent, when our enemy was vast, spectacularly well-armed, beat us into space, and had nuclear missiles pointed in our face.
The compass points towards liberty, but sometimes we walk east, or west, or, during the Kennedy and Nixon and Reagan administrations, fucking south.
There is an interesting interview with him at http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/cpproject/caughlan_inter...
It is worth noting that our strong protections of open dissent were specifically created by the court in response to very dramatic overreaches by the government.
The notion that protesters ended the Vietnam war is also ahistorical, a fiction designed to flatter the boomers.
I'm responding to the "Eventually" you wrote. When you're digging yourself a grave, the sooner you put down your shovel and get out of the hole, the better.
I live in LA and personally know families who spent time in those camps. I also know screenwriting families who lost their jobs during the 1950s Hollywood blacklist. So yes, those mistakes were real, and they can divert the course of lives for the worse.
In the flawed world we live in, it takes time for people to change their minds and muster the political will to roll them back. This is generally prompted by over-reach. For example, as the cold war started to cool off a bit, the Church Committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee) and the Pike Committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_Committee). Maybe we're seeing such a time now.
I bet voicing support to a state-sponsored terrorist organisation with officially declared goal of violently overthrowing US government could get you into some trouble anytime. Especially if you work for government and have access to sensitive data.
Since limited government lasted in America for less than 100 years, I assume it was an unstable state. I don't mourn its passing, it was inevitable. Instead I think of how to make better places to live, and technology to fight the authoritarians.
I'm not so sure about that. As I learned in another thread, for example, that NSA had been requesting phone records of __BEFORE__ Sept. 11:
Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, convicted of insider trading in April 2007, alleged in appeal documents that the NSA requested that Qwest participate in its wiretapping program __more than six months before September 11, 2001__. Nacchio recalls the meeting as occurring on February 27, 2001. Nacchio further claims that the NSA cancelled a lucrative contract with Qwest as a result of Qwest's refusal to participate in the wiretapping program
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_for_NSA_spying for more.
Honestly I feel like the most understated danger in all of this is the 95,500 non-American deaths presumably caused by Americans. I imagine that each of those 95,500 or so has a family and many people who are angry and looking for revenge. It's pretty incredible that we have done all of this in the name of "safety" and have simply gone out of our way to recruit hundreds of thousands of people who want to kill Americans. Utterly amazing how modern human logic works.
It isn't logical, its emotional. There is no logic in imperialism given historical evidence against it.
If we want to talk about what the blowback will be from the Iraq war, then the rest of that is very relevant though.
Just putting this all in a bit of perspective:
This is some character that, after those two buildings were hit by planes and three buildings collapsed into dust, we were shown a picture of and told he did it. He released a few Tupac-style mixtapes, we fought a few wars to go get this guy and his friends, and then we were told ten years later we finally got him and his body was dumped somewhere in the ocean. But we're still fighting those wars.
> “The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful, and others abhorrent and felonious. Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: It is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. It would surprise no impartial observer if the motto “In God we trust” were one day expunged from the coins of the republic by the Junkers at Washington, and the far more appropriate word, “verboten,” substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas-relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet. Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.”
That was written by H. L. Mencken in 1920.
I think about things like the Japanese internment camps the US set up during WW2, and I imagine that it must've always been pretty fucking bad.
Destroyed though it is. I left everything behind to move somewhere better. It's tough, but it's worth it.
For all it's doing wrong, the NSA has a goal in mind to try to protect the American people. If its methods become cancerous that is one thing, but factor in the intentions here. They are not trying to ruin lives, even though their perspectives might be warped.
This idea is mistaken because nobody knows what their intents are. Your idea of "just trust them" isn't comforting; quite the opposite.
A government that has lost accountability is far more dangerous than a terrorist organization. If you don't believe that, ask those who fled the Soviet Union, or who lived through Saddam's regime in Iraq.
The problem here is that there is no end to this. It will drag on and on, with more and more freedoms lost as long as people continue to cower in fear like this.
Frankly, I would argue that the 3,000 lives lost in the attacks pale in comparison to the total number of casualties that occurred during the Iraq War. You can look at the numbers yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Events like 9/11 have a significance beyond a raw casualty count, and you know that as well as I do. I'm not even sure what your point is. If you think OBL's goal was to inconvenience people at airports, you've left reality far, far behind.
Pearl Harbor was the first act of that war, not a cause of the war. Whereas Osama bin Laden didn't have much capacity to do anything beyond 9/11 style attacks, the Japanese were intending to take control of the entire pacific. There is a huge difference there.
Is there a single country that is reasonably free and where freedom is increasing instead of decreasing?
EDIT: it's a list measuring economic freedom so it's clearly not relevant to discussion about PRISM.
The thing that upsets me most is that I suspect nobody except for the whistleblower will take any real heat. I hope more will come forward with more details in the coming weeks, before the government makes an example of the whisteblower.
Will this incident change user behavior? I doubt it. We're too dependent on these companies to cut them off en masse.
It is inevitable they are going to be hit with requests for information, they could dig their heels in on some things but ultimately they legally have to provide some of the information requested. They could have implemented APIs without any idea of how the NSA structured or code named the technology internally on the NSA's side. And I'm sure Google, Facebook, et al implemented whatever they implemented with little knowledge of how other companies were complying or not.
What I imagine happened is that any company that took compliance seriously, likely for their own staff's benefit, as a side effect became a stronger asset to the NSA than companies like Twitter who resisted.
And lastly, I'm not saying any of this is good. It just seems extremely plausible and not part of a massive conspiracy to give the NSA access to as much data as possible.
Wait, why can't it be both of those things? What could the phrase "massive conspiracy" mean if it doesn't apply to a situation like this?
"conspiracy" suggests a bunch of people were trying to accomplish a goal in secret, at odds with the interests of the general public. Yup!
"massive" implies significant scale - that it was a LOT of people sharing a LOT of information. Check!
I'm not seeing anything missing...
What conceivable "probable cause" could justify data collection on the scale being discussed? Practices being "codified into law" (largely secret laws, being interpreted in secret ways) doesn't really let anyone off the hook here. Or it shouldn't, at any rate. (Congresscritters and presidents still have an oath of office that promises to defend the constitution, right?)
The OP makes a good point here. These companies aren't out to intentionally harm their own users. They are out to make money and that sometimes has some side effects we don't like. But it is also entirely possible that they really do care about their customers/users too. Sometimes I feel like most people somehow have this idea that all these big companies are evil and really are involved in some mass conspiracy to harm us somehow. I once ran a company. I think this is somewhat related to this sort of war between companies trying to extract as much money per customer and customers trying to extract as much value from companies at as little cost as possible. But that's a topic for another time.
All the OP was really getting at with the conspiracy remark, and OP please correct me if I'm wrong, is that whether or not they intentionally gave the government access to some or all of their data they didn't do so knowing or intending for it to be used the way it was. They were trying cover their ass by complying with certain laws and the authorities and this massive cluster fuck was an unexpected consequence of that.
The NSA sought to expand its own power in secret though quasi-legal means with the help of a few powerful men in government and a lot of scared people in corporations. The conspiracy used leverage to force cooperation by companies. You don't have to be evil in order to do evil by cooperating with a conspiracy, even (especially!) one run by the government.
All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men - or good companies - do nothing.
If for something to be "a conspiracy" you require that EVERYBODY who helps the effort be consciously furthering the actual goals of the conspiracy, you've defined conspiracy in such a way that it is unlikely one could ever exist. In any actual plausible conspiracy there will always be unwitting dupes. There will always be people who've managed to convince themselves that they personally are doing good or that the organization is good even if the effects it produces don't turn out that way.
Yes!
What exactly is being said, but more importantly what is not being said? Zuck's post was 169 words on one of the most important stories to break about privacy and tech companies.
What are we to believe PRISM is now? Is it
a) a firehose feed that allocates arbitrary, indisriminate, ad-hoc querying over large swaths of user data in cloud datacenters?
or
b) is it an automated system for sending out National Security Letters, and the polling dropbox locations for compliance, and then importing the data into some centralized government intelligence repository?
a) is an absolute outrage, there should be rioting in front of congress and the whitehouse
b) is pretty much just making delivery of information they are compelled to legally deliver more efficient. Although if I were these companies, I'd make it as painful as possible by printing all of the information requested on sheets of paper in Comic Sans and mailing it USPS.
From the NYT story seems that PRISM is more b) than a). However, I suppose the remaining questions are:
1) To what extent did these automated processes for reducing the burden of handling FISA requests enable the total quantity of data requested through FISA requests to increase? "Quantity has a quality all its own."
2) How extensive are these broad-sweep FISA requests now, and to what extent do they falsify the impression that FISAs are "lawful, specific orders about individuals" (Google), "orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers" (Microsoft)? In other words, that each individual FISA request covers only one person or a handful of people, so for example the number of people intruded on by FISAs last year is some reasonably small multiple of 1,856?
3) To what extent could the compartmentalisation of FISA information to a few employees, combined with the streamlining process and broad FISA requests, mean that the CEOs have less awareness than they thought about just how broad the FISA net really casts by now? Or instead are they happy not to know, or happy to be able to pretend not to know?
In other words, is PRISM b) in principle but something closer to a) in practise, and if so who knew?
Uh, wow.
If true, that would explain the very carefully worded language of both Google and Facebook that they did not give the NSA "direct access" to their servers.
So THAT is why all the responses repeated "direct access".
NSA presumably wouldn't want most Google employees to know they're FISAing info on KSM. They may be willing to read in a few Google employees to handle turning over the data, though.
There may be some special magic to hide the actual target from Google while Google still gets to review the order itself. (the name of the target is presumably non-meaningful to Google).
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> * “The U.S. government does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centers,” Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement on Friday. “We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law.”*
Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the same distinction.
But instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.
The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.
Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company.
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The NYT is talking only about FISA requests, which are a secret process but, as far as everything reported about that process has said, targets individuals. Moreover, when FISA is used on Americans, it's a process that involves a court-approved warrant.
So you can argue that FISA is wrong or that it is administered with a rubber stamp (and in my opinion, yes, this is most definitely worth scrutinizing, and it has been for however many years it's been put in place), or that no ethical company should ever comply with a FISA request...but that's not the same ballpark as what's being alleged with Verizon or with PRISM.
The point about these companies making it "easier" by creating a systematic delivery process, such as a "lockbox", to send over the requested data is an interesting detail, but kind of a non sequitur. Either FISA is OK or it is flat out wrong...what does it matter which digital process is set up to fulfill that request?
So one day, an NSA agent negotiates with Google to build fisarequest.supersecret.google.com. NSA agents can directly upload FISA request documents, as easily as submitting expense receipts. In turn, Google's legal department can view each request and decide to comply with the click of a mouse, as easily as approving an expense report. If authorization is granted, the NSA can now view the emails of the requested user, and new emails can simply be viewed with a refresh of the browser. As Schmidt and Drummond say, Google can decline a request if it's improper or overly broad, and ask for additional information -- again, as easily as a manager looking at a questionable minibar expense on a trip report.
Said NSA agent does this with multiple companies, internally brands this as PRISM, puts together a Powerpoint deck, and declares victory. It's "direct access" since it's coming straight from Google and on a Google server, and it's "real-time" in that a request can be authorized quickly, and there are no more .zip files with data dumps involved.
Google has never actually heard of PRISM, and only knows that they built a tool to make it easier to do what they were already doing with legal FISA requests. To them, the NSA doesn't have "direct access," which is a loaded term for unfettered superuser access.
The entire program costs only $20mm because the government now requires only a few agents to submit requests and collect data. The cost of building the tools is borne by the companies, who see it as a cheaper way to comply with an existing legal obligation.
The EFF publishes a timeline of when companies decided to streamline their own access requests, which may well be perfectly truthful.
"We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box."
In my layman's opinion, building such a backdoor in an infrastructure as complicated as Google's would require a team as well as an oversight group...someone has to write tests for that "feature" and someone else has to make sure those tests aren't seen by those who don't need to know (I.e. the rest of Google's sizable test department)...this kind if arrangement would seemingly have to be known by someone on the executive team.
While it's possible that NSA does not have "completely unfettered" access to all Google/Facebook/Microsoft databases, it's obvious that they have direct access to a system which provides real-time data. For example in the case of monitoring Skype conversations (voice, video, data), email, and web searches, of a previously identified target. Yes, they sign off at the start, and then they let the system RUN.
Of course data is sent "automatically" and "in bulk" but by themselves these words mean little to nothing. I think the question is do they even bother identifying foci for the search? For Verizon "meta-data" they didn't bother, they just suck it all up. Note well, that URLs are considered "meta-data", even though in most cases they fully describe the content. Note well, GPS location of your phone is "meta-data".
A true and honest debate about whether we want to live under this type of "total surveillance" would require a lot of education for the average American to understand what these systems are truly capable of. Senators Wyden and Udell have been whispering warnings for years, but even they are gagged by FISA. It's so insulting to hear Obama claim he welcomes debate on the subject, while he continues to obfuscate the true scope of the surveillance.
If the PRISM slides are accurate about the "2 degrees of separation" then even targeting an individual at the start is meaningless. 2 degrees of separation along what axis? You think it's just 2 degrees of "sent mail"? There are spooks who do nothing but think about this shit all day long... "Two degrees of separation" could mean the warrant automatically broadens itself up to 2 hops from the foci, based on any "contact" along:
- Outgoing / Incoming email
- Facebook, Skype, Google Groups, contact lists
- IRC channel members
- Common web searches
- Common URLs visited
- Common brick & mortor shops visited
You can taint a LOT of people with only 2 degrees of separation if you starting thinking along multiple dimensions of contact.
It's specifically this "social network" which the FBI is interested in. You need these "support systems" installed at Google/Facebook/Microsoft if you want to build the graph out efficiently. The document was leaked, the government acknowledged how vital and important they believe it is for them to have access to this data. I'm not sure what more do you need to see?
Frankly, the blog posts the way they are worded don't deny anything at all. If Google was willing and able, they could tell us unequivocally the process, format, and scope of the data they share with the NSA. A Google Analytics for "NSA Spook Activity, Quarterly". Then we can start to have the "public debate".
The NYT doesn't seem to be talking about PRISM here. It seems to be talking about FISA. From the WaPo and Guardian's reports, I thought that PRISM was concocted as a response to what the NSA saw as "shortcomings" in FISA?
What's unclear between the original descriptions of what the slides called Prism and these descriptions is just how automatic the system is - if the steps of lawyers individually reviewing each request still exist.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 granted the government the right to order communication providers to give the government content on foreigners with a broad, non-particularized court order.
This is what PRISM is. The order requires companies to provide assistance and facilities.
A traditional FISA warrant names a citizen or foreigner specifically. A warrant is always needed for this kind of surveillance, but the target is rarely, if ever, told (unlike with a criminal wiretap).
In short, the 2008 Amendment allows the NSA to order companies to help with bulk collection. It's section 702.
What? So not being a US citizen makes us second class citizens in game of online privacy? That's ridiculous. And no, these requests were not just for individual foreign users.
> FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said.
from the OP.
Who gives the US government the right to see my online private data without my consent? esp when I am not even a US citizen.
It leaves open the possibility that however "indirect access" is defined is how they get their info.
DIRECT ACCESS ZOMG :P
> FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said.
Looks like personal data could be turned over (well, at least part of your search history) even if you're not being targeted individually.
They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests.
Really, NYT? More securely? And the users, they are all foreign? And all the government requests, deemed lawful from the outset?
Come on, at this point, are they even trying with the balanced reporting thing? Tech companies may be bristling, but the NYT is surely lodged in the government wing.
I understand wanting to narrow the scope of the data available, but no one has put forth evidence yet that Facebook is periodically giving the government the equivalent of an SQL dump. Unlike Verizon, they appear to be producing limited information in response to a specific request on foreign nationals.. Streamlining this process doesn't raise the same issues for me as does the Verizon order.
I'd be curious how many DMs are sent compared to public tweets.
"Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line between giving the government wholesale access to its servers to collect user data and giving them specific data in response to individual court orders. Each said it did not provide the government with full, indiscriminate access to its servers."
Tech companies do not allow widespread open access to their data. They respond to legal requests that come from FISA for records on individual users. Huge difference.
We were reassured about the 'individual users' part by the tech companies yesterday. And yet:
> FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said.
What's the truth here?
1. How does this explanation relate to the slide that the US is the World's Telecommunication Backbone? The only explanation I can think of is that Google, etc... were only providing information for servers that were physically in the US.
2. How does this prism name relate to the program? To me, the prism name seems more linked to fiber optic cable than to this sort of data monitoring. Perhaps it's an allusion to splitting the data stream and reflecting it to the NSA.
> Officials would not discuss details of the overcollection problem because it involves classified intelligence-gathering techniques. But the issue appears focused in part on technical problems in the N.S.A.’s ability at times to distinguish between communications inside the United States and those overseas as it uses its access to American telecommunications companies’ fiber-optic lines and its own spy satellites to intercept millions of calls and e-mail messages.
Maybe the second slide in the WaPo selection refers to the wiretapping operations, the third and later ones reproduced by WaPo refer to the "FISA API" operations involving Google, MS, Facebook etc. and the transition between the two topics is in the omitted slides between 2 and 3.
That sounds to me like PRISM is in fact just a name for an overall consistent system of routing data from specific individual requests.
And what are the sources for the claims in this article?
> In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a tech company’s headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed software on the company’s server and remained at the site for several weeks to download data to an agency laptop.
> In other instances, the lawyer said, the agency seeks real-time transmission of data, which companies send digitally.
I would like to know the source of this information, and to be presented with evidence that it is true.
Google, Microsoft and Twitter publish transparency reports detailing government requests for information, but these reports do not include FISA requests because they are not allowed to acknowledge them.
Yet since tech companies’ cooperation with the government was revealed Thursday, tech executives have been performing a familiar dance, expressing outrage at the extent of the government’s power to access personal data and calling for more transparency, while at the same time heaping praise upon the president as he visited Silicon Valley.
So Larry Page and Zuckerberg are just deceiving the public because they are ignoring FISA requests.
I'm so outraged right now.
Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. "
Twitter is heroic. Shame on Google, Facebook and all the other state-stooges
For those companies called out but not involved (as the Post walks back its language), it has to be an exceptionally frustrating experience.
Why aren't we all using Bitmessage already?
And, even if none of that were the case, the most important reason we aren't using it already is because the people we want to talk to aren't using it, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect