With Prism Cooperation, Tech Giants Look Weak | Hacker News Reader

With Prism Cooperation, Tech Giants Look Weak

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54 pointswill_brown14 comments

I am also disappointed by the tech giants behavior, but not primarily for PRISM.

Yes, they shouldn't give the data that willingly, but what I see as much more troubling is the agencies ability to tap into the net's full flow of communications (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A, etc.)

I simply don't believe that the Big Techs weren't aware of this. And here lies the biggest hypocrisy of their: that those companies, especially Google and Facebook, instead of warning us that our privacy is being slowly stolen from us, went the opposite route and encouraged us to share even more of our personal data, which now all ended in we-don't-know-in-how-many data centers belonging to various governments.

There are huge penalties for saying no, contractually, etc. Just look at the Gibson guitar raids. Also wasn't YAHOO one that did say no and still they were strong armed? I mean, it is the gov. that has the real teeth here (real weapons, regulation rulings etc., not patents).

For some of the tech companies, yes. But I imagine that even the US government would have some significant day-to-day challenges if Google were not available to it's employees (State or Federal).

That has to provide some leverage when dealing with situations that you should not be comfortable with.

> But I imagine that even the US government would have some significant day-to-day challenges if Google were not available to it's employees (State or Federal).

Oh, you have no idea. Even in the DoD Google is a required element of much of what I do on some weeks.

Google especially tends to give in pretty easily to these outside pressures. Look what they've done for MPAA/RIAA over the years. They've automated the DMCA process for them for both Google search and Youtube, even though they weren't compelled to do so.

I bet they also believe they've washed their hands off this because they "report" these DMCA takedowns. Yeah, thanks Google - for creating an automated censorship system that no Court or law asked you to create.

A DMCA takedown request isn't talking about a URL -- it's talking about content. Google is likely saving themselves lifetimes of human effort (and the associated salaries) that would have to go into manual screening. I imagine content ID is necessary for YouTube to exist sustainably -- not a gift to RIAA/MPAA.

No, they remove search results as well. See chillingeffects.org.

A DMCA takedown request requires "Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material." Generally, this means that the company submitting the takedown provides a specific list of URLs with infringing content. They can't just say "videos infringing on x exist on your site, go find them", and the safe harbor provision of the DMCA means that Google isn't responsible for hunting down infringement on their own.

You are conflating and confusing things.

Under our system of laws, the corporations own this data, and they can do what they please. Sell or give it away to the NSA? Well, why not?

Even if the FISA court is eliminated (fat chance), it will not change much in the long haul. "Cooperation" will be encouraged by many legal means.

We should not expect that corporate-owned property will be used in a way that we are all happy and hunky-dory about. If we do not like that, change the laws.

>they can do what they please. Sell or give it away to the NSA? Well, why not?

Exactly. The can do whatever they please. They have the power to tell the NSA to take a hike. And that power makes them look strong in the eyes of their customers.

And that strong action is not the one they took. They had the power to do whatever they pleased with their data that their customers gave them, and they chose to hand it to the government. And that makes them look weak.

This is a perception issue that is not directly (but is certainly indirectly) tied to a bottom line. Sure, they government will give them some cash - and sure they'd fire up a few lawsuits if the companies refused to cooperate. But all of that is chump change compared to revenue from 'all non-US customers'.

Actually, I am still waiting for Google and other companies to offer us some real explanation.

What could have happened? Maybe they didn't expect it will be whistle-blowed, maybe they realized that the NSA is so technologically strong that making such obstructions doesn't really matter, or they were receiving other benefits for cooperating, who knows? ...but I think it will be clearer after a few more Guardian articles. ;-)

> Finally, on Friday, the New York Times reported[1]—using some conveniently leaked documents—that Yahoo had tried to resist the NSA’s attempts to compel it to provide user data but was ultimately unsuccessful and was ordered by the court to comply.

> These companies may have convinced themselves that cooperation was inevitable, or that they needed to do something to help the government catch terrorists, or that by automating the legally legitimate FISA process they could save themselves a lot of trouble and expense, or some combination of all the above. But in reality, they have not only shown themselves to be weak—which will encourage the NSA to pressure them even further because it knows it can win—but also fundamentally untrustworthy, and that could cause them a lot more problems with users than they ever contemplated.

Who is voting up this nonsense? Since when is losing in court equivalent to rolling over for the NSA? Not only does the author refer to the "the legally legitimate FISA process" multiple times (apparently the government is absolved from blame here), he also writes multiple times that we has no idea what PRISM actually is. But why not jump to conclusions anyway!

> So far, the only company that seems to have emerged unscathed is Twitter, which reportedly fought the government’s attempts to enrol the company in the Prism program and succeeded, a tale that has burnished Twitter’s claim to be the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”

Except that Twitter has agreed with Google in saying that companies should be allowed to disclose ranges of FISA requests separate from other requests, rather than lumping all requests (federal and local) together[2]. It's not a slam dunk, but it strongly implies that, regardless of what PRISM is, Twitter has received and complied with FISA orders.

This article seems like the author said, "We still don't know what PRSIM is, but I have a deadline, so let's see what I can bang out in 5 minutes." Not only are there no new facts, what speculation is here doesn't even seem well thought through.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/technology/secret-court-ru...

[2] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/google-calls-u-s-da...

Non-mobile version for you desktop users out there - http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-17/with-prism-c...

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