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Comment by sbwm | Hacker News Reader

A program that does not "allow the kind of access that the media originally reported"?

The companies have hinted there is much more they would like to talk about, but aren't allowed to. It must be hugely frustrating for them to see headlines like this, and be saying "yes, but you are missing the really important facts which we know but aren't allowed to tell you!".

I wondered if the comments in those slides about these companies "joining the program" were meant to be an internal joke. In other words, this could be internal NSA jargon for "screwed up their security badly enough that we were then able to wholesale intercept data going between their servers".

These latest revelations would seem to imply that no, it's not an internal joke.

I guess I don't feel too much sympathy for their frustrations. These are billion-dollar companies, the real behemoths of our age. If they leaned on Senators the NSA program would go away but they don't. They play ball and we're all the worse off for it.

If they are in fact frustrated, an honest statement would be "We won't lie to you. Draw your own conclusions. That is all."

Yes. Even better would be statements like Wyden and Udall have made. They should say something like:

"We won't lie to you, but we think this information should be public and if you knew what we know, then you'd be writing and calling your representative urging them to allow us to talk about it."

They could go even farther by passing judgement with the addition "... because what is being done in the name of the average citizen presents an existential threat to democracy and the betterment of a free and open society."

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