Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to misinterpret the (admittedly complicated) facts for the sake of the instant gratification of conclusion-jumping.

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.

Yeah, this is pretty much bullshit (then again, why is Techcrunch being featured again at the top of HN on this subject of all subjects??).

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.

That complicated? Really? The original Google blog post have a feel of being written by a lawyer. I guess a pass through an authorship identification tool can confirm it. So I guess the story of that post on Google blog was actually a pretty simple one and close to the following: "David Drummond wrote the text, Larry got it as an e-mail, added the subject "What the ...?" ;) and published it".

What about the post reads like it came directly from a lawyer?

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.

When you get a FISA letter you aren't allowed to acknowledge that you got it, or tell anyone about it. So yes, there are very tricky laws to skirt around here which necessitate the use of a lawyer when responding to these.

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.

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