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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry, but I can't take these statements at face value. Those PRISM slides have not exactly been disavowed by the NSA, and they make it quite clear that there is some kind of "program" that Google (and others) are part of. I don't buy that it's no more than "you send us a court order and we send you the data" because that wouldn't justify having a name ("PRISM") and a list of "join dates" for the various companies, etc.

Simply put, I think Google, Yahoo, Apple, MS, etc. are all lying about their involvement in all this, to some extent. Maybe the NSA does or doesn't have "direct" access (whatever you think that means) but I believe there is something going on, beyond the run of the mill request/response scenario.

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One distinct possibility is that whoever put those slides together made misrepresentations in the case of some or all companies.

To me PRISM sounds like it's the front end that analysts use, something that unifies all the different data sources from companies, which in turn vary in their degree of cooperation with the government. The data from Google could very well be the data from specific court orders that name individuals. The join dates could just be the dates that whoever was writing the PRISM software was able to integrate the data from whichever company.

I think your absolutely correct here. From I have gleaned from various news articles, MAINWAY and MARINA were the systems that were used to store telephone and internet records respectively. Whereas PRISM was used as an analysis tool.

Is your hypothesis falsifiable? In other words, is there anything Google could do or say to convince you that they are not, in fact, in cahoots with the NSA?

is there anything Google could do or say to convince you that they are not, in fact, in cahoots with the NSA?

First of all, I don't see it as a binary thing, where I'm 100% convinced they are or 100% convinced they aren't. It's more like, "what's the probability that they are?" That said, they could lower my estimate of the probability that they are (in cahoots with the NSA), although perhaps not lower it to zero. But nothing they are likely to actually do.

For example, agreeing to an extensive audit of all of their internal systems, by a 3rd party organization which gets full access to everything inside Google for some period of time, including looking at source code. If somebody did that, and came back and said they found no signs of any kind of NSA tie-in, I'd be somewhat more convinced.

But, that's obviously not realistic and I won't be holding my breath for it to happen. :-)

Let me get this straight... You would trust Google MORE if they let a third party company come in and have full access to EVERYTHING? Source code and data? And whose to say that company isn't associated with the NSA or the Chinese government?

This is what auditors exist for - to bolster trust - they get to ask the difficult questions, look at the systems and processes in place, and assess the behaviour of a company in order to reassure external parties (often investors). They do often genuinely have access to data and code, even if it is perhaps slightly rarer for them to bring the skills to truly interrogate them.

The reliability of an auditor is based on their perceived level of trust in the community. As an investor, you want to be assured that your investment is worthwhile, so you want to work with an auditor that is thorough and highly confidential.

If an auditor can be proven to have intentionally misled in the past, or to have worked with shady agencies / outside parties, that would be a very black mark against them and future business, so it should, ideally, not be in their best interests. Note that this does not except the behaviour of humans in practice, where short term gains of a person might not be aligned with their parent organization (c.f. banking).

And whose to say that company isn't associated with the NSA or the Chinese government?

That's the rub... you never really know. Especially when we have "secret government" with things like gag orders, secret laws, secret courts, etc. That's what makes all this so insidious.

They could release all details regarding what the NSA asked of them, for starters, and what they do to ensure the NSA has no way to get data from Google in one way or another.

And participate in stopwatching.us. Why no support there?

You are aware that Google is currently suing FISA for the right to release that information, yes?

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/18/technology/security/google-n...

Yes, and it seems more like a PR coup than anything else, seriously. For a company that has as much resources as Google, this is far from being significant.

stopwatching.us's letter to Congress is based on the premise that the Guardian and WashPo articles are true. Of course, Google and others are swearing that it's false. So why would Google want to sign that letter?

This also assumes that a letter like this does any good. I would think that Google actually filing a legal challenge with FISA is going to be more effective.

They aren't allowed to release the details of what the NSA asked. It's Catch 22 for them.

Having seen first hand the number of ex CIA/SS/NSA/MIL emps there are at FB, GOOG would have to prove that they did not have the same level of infestation....

Do they have a DC policy Office? FB does... What is the nature of the policy office GOOG has... Can it be verified that its not just a YESSIR system? Probably not...

Making it not a felony to talk about it might help.

These are peanuts compared to what happend in the sworn testimony to congres. Members of the government knowingly perjured themselves http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/07/Director-... , and not much is being said about that.

To be fair, the data was / is being collected about networks, IPs and phone numbers not Americans. The fact that the IPs and phone numbers are strongly correlated with individual Americans may be a technicality.

Sorry to bring this up but this type of thinking seems to be running wild lately on HN regarding anything NSA related.... But it must be said that: Your Logical Fallacy Is: Burden of Proof.

You said that the burden of proof lies not with the person making the claim, but with someone else to disprove. The burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever. However it is important to note that we can never be certain of anything, and so we must assign value to any claim based on the available evidence, and to dismiss something on the basis that it hasn't been proven beyond all doubt is also fallacious reasoning.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

You're assuming I'm making a claim that I'm not. And if anything, you have it completely backwards. IF the claim were a simple "Google is complicit with the NSA", then one could say that the available evidence weighs in favor of that claim. IF Google want to make a claim "we are not in bed with the NSA" the burden of proof IS on Google to prove that "we are not in bed with the NSA", especially in light of evidence which strongly suggests that they are.

It's a moot point though, as the only claims I'm making are:

A. I don't trust Google (and Yahoo, etc.). That doesn't need any proof, as it's simply a statement of my position.

B. There is probably something more to the NSA/Google/Yahoo/MS/Apple relationship than what Google/Yahoo/Apple/MS are publicly saying. There is evidence (the PRISM slides) to directly support this.

I'm not making any more specific claim (eg "Google have a secret server that the NSA ssh into and do direct queries on Google's database" or something) because, quite simply, I don't know. And without the rest of the PRISM slides, or the other Snowden docs, or some other input, we'll probably never know. But I've seen enough to not trust Google/Yahoo/Apple/MS/etc. completely.

Powerpoint slides of unverified origin I don't think quite meets the burden of proof that Google is complicit or even involved in anything. They are just that: Powerpoint slides.

My understanding is that the origin is verified. I don't have the citation handy, but I believe that reporters from the WaPo contacted the NSA before the story ran, and verified that the slides are - at least - authentic.

Granted, there's a lot we don't know about them, but I haven't seen any reason to believe that they aren't exactly what they seem to be.

So what are you basing on that Google, Yahoo, etc are lying?

Gut feel? hunch?

The choice of words tends to be a good tipoff.

When someone answers a different question than the one asked, or uses different terms that are more flexable in scope or definition. Originally they focused on 'no direct access' and ' no back door'. As a computer person you can understand that there are lots of ways to get information in or out of a system that can be characterized differently than the above phrases. It's like talking to child about a how they got the cookie they have in their hands, did they take it, did they pick it up, did they steal it, did the find it, did it fall off a truck, did a guy name Vinny give it to them because hes a nice guy, etc. And what is the legal definition of 'cahoots' anyway?

A lawyer is talking, so you have to be extremely careful with what they say. "I’m not sure I can say this more clearly: we’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there’s is no government program that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported." Okay, so it's not a program, maybe it's a project, or a NSL, or and executive order, or a collaboration. Having shown themselves to be complicit in a lie of omission (not saying anything because of gag orders) And having changed their statements a few times their word is suspect and needs to be examined.

It is imposible to prove a negative. That kinda sucks for Google because they have brought into question our trust in them and it may take a good long while to rebuild that trust, even if they tried to.

He cannot enumerate everything someone might dream up and deny them all. He is denying directly the things people have accused. What more could he say?

It's a combination of things. I wouldn't say there's a "smoking gun" necessarily, but a lot of small things, taken together, strongly suggest that there is more to this.

Persons holding clearances are not allowed to confirm or deny any purported classified material, so I would expect any NSA disavowal to take some time if it occurs at all.

Drumond: "Note that I say “originally” because you’ll see that many of those original sources corrected their articles after it became clear that the PRISM slides were not accurate."

Someone, possibly a Google /Fb /Microsoft /Yahoo PR hack, started this rumor. The Guardian posted the slides and Snowden interviews and are sticking to the original story as far as I can tell. No one has said that the slides were fake and if they aren't, why would NSA mislead its employees on the ways of collecting data?

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