Comment by coreyja | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coreyja | Hacker News Reader

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I may be part of the minority here, but I have/see no reason to believe the Facebook is lying about these numbers, or lying about the fact they actually check every request, and don't have a NSA backdoor. If I am correct, they only thing that shows Facebook has given the NSA/government agency access to their servers is a leaked PowerPoint presentation. I believe it is more than likely that one of the following two options is true. (1) The PowerPoint is just wrong, and was made it up someone working for a government contractor. (2) The PowerPoint is inaccurate in that these corporations have complied with the government, when asked to and required by law too, through the use of warrants, both secret and otherwise.

Personally I think option 2 is the most likely scenario. Facebook (and Google and most of the other named corporations) have done nothing to lose my trust in them. The only party that at this time, I know is to blame is the NSA/government for conducting a cloaked surveillance operation on the entire US population. Until there is proof, or a reasonable argument, showing that these corporations willingly complies with the NSA and were a part of PRISM, I don't think they have lost any substantial part of my trust.

The problem is that before these leaks, the Director of National Intelligence was asked point-blank in a congressional hearing whether or not the NSA was conducting surveillance on Americans, and he unequivocally said no. Given that history, I think it's prudent to approach the veracity of further denials with caution.

It's true that Facebook is not the US government, so perhaps we should be less hesitant about the claims they make. However, Facebook does have a history in this area that gives me some pause. Their former CSO was Max Kelly, who is ex-FBI, and would give talks about shit like the need for "uniting" military and commercial "cyber defense." So to the extent that we're dependent on Facebook's internal narrative to determine how they respond to the US government, my sense is that at Facebook, much of that narrative was set by someone who is largely sympathetic to government cooperation.

I think you're correct in pointing out that the NSA is ultimately to blame. However, I think we should acknowledge that while companies like Facebook obviously do not have malicious intent, they are still in the surveillance business. What they are building does have some inherent danger, and will continue to attract the interest of the US government, foreign governments, and attackers.

I wish I saw more people hammering home the point you made in the first paragraph. Too many people are looking for ways around discussing what is just as an important piece of this puzzle as the leak itself: The director of National Intelligence lied to the Senate. To their faces, through his teeth, on camera, in front of the American people.

I'm in the camp that Senator Wyden asked the question in such a way because he knew what the answer was going into the thing.

At this point, you need to start looking at everyone as a suspect. It's an uncomfortable notion, we might not like it, but it's a reality pill ya gotta swallow.

And also Obama promised no surveillance before winning the first election. It took him weeks to change his mind.

I'm sure it's all shrouded in "classified" and "top secret" tape, but I'm intensely curious to know what President Obama knows that Candidate Obama doesn't.

Maybe it's the same thing all presidents learn their first couple of months in office. Maybe it's a memo that gets placed on the desk in the Oval Office by some shadowy figure. Whatever the case, the honeymoon is over, folks.

I suspect that it was much like the "too big to fail" scandal. President Obama was new to the game and let the people who said they knew what they were doing run the show. On one hand he's got the feel-good speeches he made as a candidate and on the other hand he's got agencies and contractors with billions of dollars of budget on the line all pushing as hard as they can to justify their existence and their budgets. The inertia alone was probably impossible to defeat given how divided his focus was (the economic collapse and the two years of obamacare politics come to mind).

It could be as easily be the case that Candidate Obama was free while President Obama is blackmailed.

That's the problem with centralization, with representative democracy. A single point of failure is a bad idea. It's time for participatory/direct democracy.

Yes, but you're missing something. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo also offered blanket denials. So the fact that FB has a former CSO with some FBI background has nothing to do with the other companies.

Put another way, DNI lying != FB|Google|Apple|MSFT|Yahoo lying.

If we're talking about the same question, he was asked if the NSA collects data of millions Americans, to which he answered in the negative. This information from Facebook does not contradict that statement.

And to me, that's an important distinction: millions versus < 20,000. I might be persuaded that there existed a few thousand cases in those six months where law enforcement had legitimate reasons to get data from Facebook, for the types of criminal activity mentioned in this post from Facebook.

Does anyone have a link the the congressional hearing that was mentioned? I haven't seen it and would be curious to watch it, in particular the part that was referenced here. I think that the Director of National Intelligence flat out lied in a congressional hearing is one of the scariest aspects to all of this. Obviously he/the NSA isn't scared to lie to us and to the government while under oath. (At least I presume he was under oath.)

Here's the clip. The Daily Show also had fun with it on Monday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ss2_0emOY

I agree some skepticism is warranted, so I am looking to see what Google and others say. If several big companies all say similar things then we either believe in a much bigger conspiracy or accept their claims there is not bulk access to all accounts.

What are you looking for? The statements have all been made by those companies, and they all deny that any sort of broad data access by the NSA happens.

Either FB|Microsoft|Google|Yahoo|etc... are all lying, or Snowden didn't understand what he leaked. I'm betting the later.

Facebook's comments do not discredit the leaked materials because even if you treat Facebook as trustworthy, the NSA slides explicitly encourage analysts to use a combination methods including "UPSTREAM" data collection ("You should use both", the document reads).

The only really interesting revelation here is Facebook's confirmation that the FISA court is bundling approval for multiple users into single warrants. And if we assume that the vast majority of requests are for single users, this is a non-trivial admission. With those numbers, there could easily be a handful of warrants used to grab information on thousands of users.

They have very good reasons to lie if the government threatened Zuckerberg, et. al., with the Worldcom treatment.

I'm not saying you are wrong. There is most definitely a chance that you are correct. I guess my point is that I think these companies deserve the right of "innocent until proven guilty." And I don't believe enough has been done to prove they are guilty.

EDIT: I don't think that "innocent until proven guilty" should only apply to crimes. I think the same concept can and should be used in almost all cases of accusing a party of something.

They aren't being accused of a crime (or at least most of the controversy isn't about things that are normally considered crimes), so I'm not sure if innocent-until-proven should necessarily apply.

Innocent until proven guilty is as much logic as law/ethics. There is nothing Facebook can say or do to prove their honesty, but their dishonesty can be proven, eg, someone could leak data which could plausibly only have come from the sort of backdoor they say doesn't exist.

Of course, even if you can't prove anything, it might be prudent to hedge against the possibilities by assuming everything is actually public, but given the sort of things people post publicly (to four thousand of their closest friends and confidants) on Facebook, that might be a pretty low bar.

That's kinda the point: the US Government is threatening to literally put them on trial.

The rest of us are watching all the signs for info to help us develop our own strategy in this not-so-theoretical game of prisoner's dilemma.

Put them on trial? OK, I'll do it; source please?

<marshray> cited a CNET article I wrote this week as a threat to "put them on trial." As the author, I disagree.

If FB received a FISA Sec. 702 order for the contents of nycterrorcell@facebook.com's account, and they disclosed that, that would presumably violate a court order and they would find themselves in contempt of court. For good reason: when there is an actual terrorist investigation (remember the terrorist threat is overhyped and you're more likely to get struck by lighting), you don't want to tip off the bad guys.

But aside from that very narrow non-disclosure exception, there is no threat to "put them on trial."

And if you refuse or actively obstruct the court order?

(I was mainly citing your article to establish the the gag order. First hit for https://duckduckgo.com/?q=facebook+gag+nsa )

Ah, thanks. Didn't know it was the first hit.

If you, the recipient, want to challenge the order as invalid, you're free to do so, and there's an appeal process. I was the first to disclose two weeks ago that Google is fighting two national security orders in two different federal courts (SF and NYC). There have been other similar cases. A facial challenge to FISAA 702 (by Amnesty, not the provider) went all the way to the Supreme Court.

You really need to read the applicable laws. My articles link to them. Otherwise it's like talking about the details of mobile app development without knowing how to program.

One can't read the applicable laws, they may not have been written yet. Executives who cooperate get retroactive immunity. Those who don't go to jail for stock transactions while knowing secrets they can't legally share.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

(Note I'm not pretending to be a journalist here, just wearing my conspiracy hat today)

There is no trial for contempt of court. The judge can throw you in the slammer for disobeying a lawful order issued under valid authority of the Court.

Sounds kind of tyrannical to me, but what do I know?

The judge can "throw you in the slammer" for Direct Contempt of Court. This is when you are physically in the court room or in front of the presiding judge and do/say something that "disturbs the court." However not complying with a court order is Indirect Contempt of Court and the defendant has the right to a hearing in this case.

So disobeying a court order is contempt of court, but a judge can't throw you in jail without a hearing for it.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court#United_States

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588845-38/justice-dept-w...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gag_order

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