Doublespeak Denials Of PRISM Hid The Truth About Participation
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
But the facts remain the same: Tech CEOs carefully chose their words in order to make what they said technically true while not addressing the issue as a whole. What the government said was true and what the tech CEOs said was true, yet they seemed to contradict each other. This was a case of careful politicking from all sides.
The thing that confuses me, is did the CEOs really think this contradiction would go in their favor? In other words, did they think no one would call them on that and they would be able to get away with it? Their statements attempted to seem very forward: "Our company 'never' granted 'any' backdoor access" etc. But as a result of that feeling so contradictory to the statements of the government, it necessitated further prying.
BTW I'm not saying that PRISM doesn't exist. I'm saying its actual details are unclear in significant ways.
I don't understand how you come to this conclusion. All the companies issued flat-out denials, which they are not required to do by law. This is as opposed to the normal "no comment" or "if such an order existed..."
Google said that they only hand over specific data about specific persons after valid court orders have been reviewed by Google's lawyers. So far I have seen nothing to contradict that.
> What the government said was true and what the tech CEOs said was true, yet they seemed to contradict each other.
Could you be very specific about "what the government said"? Are you referring to an actual quote from a specific government official or to some anonymous source?
Seriously, I think the person writing this article is actually literally retarded....
No, they use a secure electronic dead drop. So what? How does that make the various CEOs' statements in any way misleading? The statements were about the government not having the ability to go on unsupervised fishing expeditions. And that seems to be perfectly true and not in any way misleading.
It is unsettling, but it isn't anything like what was detailed in the PRISM leak.
From the OP:
> The New York Times says you knowingly participated in the NSA’s PRISM data monitoring program. In some cases, you were asked to create ”a locked mailbox and give the government the key”, to allow it to peer into our private communications and web activity. Even if the exact words of your denials were accurate, they were false in spirit.
This is the article that the OP refers to: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-...;
Do a Ctrl-F and see if "PRISM" shows up. It didn't for me (not even with case-sensitive option turned off).
OK, now read the passage in the NYT article about ”a locked mailbox and give the government the key”...and then read the paragraph immediately after it:
"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."
FISA != PRISM (or at least, as PRISM has been reported initially), not in acronyms or in spirit.
I don't disagree that a lawyer vetted it -- lawyers generally vet anything legal related that comes out of an organization. All of the major news stories on this topic have likely been vetted by lawyers.
Google has been a strong proponent of transparency around these requests, but they are bound by law to not talk about it, so there's only so much they can do.
Let's say you have an actual warrant for an actual investigation, to get all of someone's email or Facebook posts. How does that article expect that information arrives? Probably in some kind of "locked mailbox" and the government has the key. It's the same exact thing, it's just the type of order that compelled the act that's different (at least as far as the only evidence we have is a bullshit "locked mailbox" metaphor...again, this is techcrunch).
Therefore, the criticism here should be at the source of FISA authorization and the sources of actual FISA demands. The fact that these companies comply with PATRIOT Act demands -- which they've been fucking telling everyone for years that they have to and that maybe these laws should be revised -- is not some kind of betrayal that they lied about because they said that the NSA doesn't have access to their servers. Just like the local Police Department also has no access to their servers.
TechCrunch = AOL
AOL = Program Participant
I mean, okay, so at least the editor and the writer for this article can be sort of credited with promoting discussion of some paper thin lip service, but what about including AOL as part of their list of villains in this narrative.
...or at least offer a "full disclosure" disclaimer at the end of the article, right?
Obviously the same goes for huffington post articles, since they were absorbed by AOL too, after all.