Comment by trevelyan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trevelyan | Hacker News Reader

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Yes. My suspicion is that your first two assumptions are incorrect, and that (1) FISA requests are not personalized under PRISM, and that consequently (2) there is no manual review or check against the abuse of power by providers on an ongoing basis.

This is the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why the NSA would be trying to hide its request volume in the larger volume of overall requests from law enforcement: an attempt to massage the average user-accounts-compromised-per-request downwards when reported to the public. If there are any other explanations you can think of for why it matters how the aggregate statistics are reported, I would be curious to hear of them.

And obviously, abuse of the FISA process renders splitting hairs about what constitutes direct/indirect access meaningless. FISA abuse plus an automated dropbox provides exactly the sort of data access that Snowden and the NSA repeatedly insist they have, while reconciling Google's claims with those of the NSA.

I don't understand the (1) and (2) thing. What does it matter whether the requests are "personalized"? In fact, I think they probably rarely are; you can look at Facebook's numbers to see the aggregates suggesting that most requests are for sizable numbers of accounts, not just one.

My point isn't that NSA's FISA directives are surgical; like you, I doubt that they are. My point is that upon receiving them, a lawyer at Google approves or rejects them, not a SQL query.

If you read all my comments on this whole annoying story I think you'll find that I'm rarely (maybe never?) sticking up for NSA, but I am happy to stick up for Google anywhere that I can. Google is actually (in this instance) fighting for your privacy, and then getting shellacked on message boards like this; what's worse, they're prevented by the USG from explaining what's happening. They're being equated with companies like AT&T, companies that appear to be sharing bedding with NSA. That belief is wrong, it's unfair, and it's counterproductive.

> If you read all my comments on this whole annoying story

Your comments have repeatedly attacked the credibility of whistleblowers, derided their claims as factually and technically impossible, and asserted that NSA statements about NSA capabilities are wrong.

> My point is that upon receiving them, a lawyer at Google approves or rejects them, not a SQL query.

I don't think Google has much say in this, but what do I know? Only that your assertion otherwise is in open conflict with claims by Snowden and the NSA officials who have briefed Congress, both of whom tell us that authority over which targets to tap is in practice delegated to security analysts.

For fuck's sake. So you don't just disagree with (1) and (2), but with the whole thing. Why not just say that?

Yes, to whatever extent that slide deck said NSA has direct access to the servers that run Google Mail, I am arguing with the slide deck.

Two days ago you were arguing with a slide deck. At this point, you're also arguing with a NSA brief of Congress and numerous public statements by members of Congress.

Swearing at me isn't the solution in any case. If you want to stop taking flack on HN, you should stop attacking the credibility of whistleblowers on the rhetorical basis that you know more about what the NSA is doing than the NSA does.

No. You're making an unfounded assumption, which is that the interpretation Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman took of that slide deck --- an interpretation Snowden appears to share --- is also what NSA believes to be the case about their access to Google's servers.

It does not follow logically that because one interpretation of an NSA slide deck is that they have direct access to the servers operating Google Mail that that's the only reasonable interpretation of the slide deck. In fact, in the week since we found out about the deck, it's looking less and less and less likely that the original interpretation is reasonable at all.

I don't mind flak (as I'm sure you can tell), but I do mind being drawn into unproductive discussions; when I asked if you disagreed with the post I made above, and you disagreed with only a small part of it in one comment but then the whole premise of it in a later comment, I got frustrated, because why take the time to reply to your comments if you're just going to move the goalposts around?

Sounds like you're not familiar with the rules of Calvinball, friend.

That comment made this whole thread worthwhile.

Honestly, I don't really care about the "direct/indirect" distinction that bothers you: the only real opinion I have on that point is that if Snowden and some anonymous powerpoint junkie can reasonably characterize their access as "direct", then arguing over whether it is in fact "indirect" from some arcane technical perspective is a waste of time.

> when I asked if you disagreed with the post I made above, and you disagreed with only a small part of it

But I don't disagree with your third through fifth statements. I suspect you're wrong to assume that (1) the FISA process is providing reasonable judicial oversight over requests and that (2) providers manually review the appropriateness of individual data requests. As far as the rest goes, this statement of yours is the core point:

> It does not follow logically that because one interpretation of an NSA slide deck is [X] ... that that's the only reasonable interpretation of the slide deck.

Assuming you believe this, I do not understand why you are so hell-bent on attacking Snowden's credibility and dismissing the concerns many other people have raised about excessive surveillance. There are clearly reasonable interpretations of the released materials which make his statements (and those of the NSA and other whistleblowers) perfectly compatible with Google's own statements.

Congratulations everyone, tptacek just successfully diverted a big part of this whole thread into an argument about something that was supposed to be irrelevant to this thread.

Funny that you should mention moving goalposts. That seems to be the M.O. of the NSA apologists. First, the arguments is "It's not content. It's just metadata, which is no different from addresses on postal mail envelopes". That's already a terrible rationalization.

But, then, revelations come out that it is more than metadata being captured. It's actual call content and no warrant is required for a run of the mill "analyst" to listen to those calls.

So, now the goalpost is being moved to whether the NSA has "direct" or "indirect" accesss to gmail servers--a specious and inconsequential debate over some subjective semantics.

What will it take for the apologists to actually grow concerned about what's really happening here?

Probably never. A lot of us "apologists" think that this is actually a good thing, but many are unwilling to admit it, even to themselves.

For me, it's simply a matter of valuing truth over privacy.

It actually would be better for the apologists to come out and say that you want the government to have carte blanche access to all of our information. At least it's honest and doesn't waste people's time in these trivial non-debates about peripheral non-issues.

OTOH, of course, that posture is all the more stupefying. Which "truth", exactly, is so important that we should all be willing to give up our privacy?

And, how is it that you find it so easy to trust our government with such power? After all, if it is untoward human beings who make truth-finding so difficult that these drastic, privacy-defiling measures are necessary, then why do you have so much trust for other fallible human beings to wield this power?

It doesn't matter which truth exactly. The more information they have access to, the better the decisions they will be able to make (in theory, at least).

I don't trust them to wield that power because I don't need to trust them. I hope that by wielding that power, they destroy it by making it clear to the world that privacy no longer exists.

The NSA brief to congress wasn't referring to PRISM at all. Telecommunications interception != PRISM.

The slide deck was always very ambiguous. But it was very interesting that it said that analysts should use both methods (PRISM and interception)

You misread the article - the briefing seems to only specifically mention wiretapping phone calls. The author goes on to say:

> Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler's disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

Meaning the US Gov't believes it has as much legal right to access e-mail as it does phone calls. Claims that they've done so in the same way (that is, in massive numbers with very little oversight or attention) are speculation. As more evidence begins to surface, it seems like telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon have been far more complicit in the NSA's indiscriminate surveillance programs than companies eg. Google that control e-mail - when's the last time you saw AT&T publish a transparency report detailing government requests for user data?

> Your comments have repeatedly attacked the credibility of whistleblowers, derided their claims as factually and technically impossible, and asserted that NSA statements about NSA capabilities are wrong.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed tptacek's tendency to defend "The Establishment" at every turn, whatever naughtiness comes up. There he goes again. I wouldn't be surprised if he had some ties to the government.

Not sure what you mean here by the establishment. I see him defending google, and rightfully so. I think google is one of the few companies who have been fighting for the privacy rights of users. It would be a shame if other companies saw the effort google puts into this, only to be tar and feathered for something they might not be guilty of.. Those other companies might decide its not worth sticking their neck out for users..

> I think google is one of the few companies who have been fighting for the privacy rights of users

.. While happily shitting on their privacy behind their backs by giving a copy of all their communications to the NSA? -That kind of "fighting"?

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