Twitter refused to join PRISM
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
I'm actually assuming this is just bad reporting; someone's source saying "refused" instead of "never heard of."
Zuck's response sounded pretty genuine in terms of his knowledge (or lack thereof) of PRISM. He would have zero incentive to say what he said if he _did_ know something.
Having said that, it does seem odd. They present a (if true) very newsworthy note about Twitter in a two-liner at the bottom of the article.
Would be good to hear more on this.
1) There's at least one tech company that was approached about joining Prism. Presumably similar approaches were made to other companies.
2) The participation was at least in this case voluntary
3) Without that participation Prism was unable to access Twitter data (based upon the slides).
According to the NYTimes article, Twitter chose not to build extra systems to help the NSA collect data more easily for FISA requests. Obviously we need to be careful here, but if that's the wording that was used, PRISM could be just that voluntary system to give easier access to NSA requested data.
Also given slide 2 (talking about network traffic routing) it seems unlikely that it's describing FISA requests.
Isn't that exactly what the leaked PowerPoints and original Washington Post article suggested? They had time-line when companies joined. And specific Special Source Operations seal for the operation and companies.
>The technology companies, whose cooperation is essential to PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley, according to the document. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted traffic of substantial intelligence interest during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
>PRISM is an heir, in one sense, to a history of intelligence alliances with as many as 100 trusted U.S. companies since the 1970s. The NSA calls these Special Source Operations, and PRISM falls under that rubric.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence...
Also interesting is that Twitter claim to have been approached about "PRISM" while all the other companies claim not to have known about that program. Would the NSA approach a company using the operation's actual codename? I suspect Twitter are jumping on the good PR after not appearing on the slides.