There's a meme on Reddit that revolves around 'so brave': basically calling people/posts/comments out for obvious pandering.<p>This reads like a pastiche of Keith Olbermann, all bravado and empty gusto. Arrington writes:<p><i>What has these people, among the wealthiest on the planet, so scared that they find themselves engaging in these verbal gymnastics to avoid telling a simple truth?</i><p>and then acknowledges that doing so, if it meant breaking FISA, is illegal.<p><i>Because their lawyers might be telling them what they are required to do. But their soul should be telling them what they must do.</i><p>What the hell does this even mean?<p>Listen, I completely agree with the central premise that we need to have an actual conversation both about privacy in the age of Facebook and the Kafka-esque way the U.S. government has engineered these catch-22 gag orders. But given Arrington's experience both with AOL and with the overall notion of privacy, I'd expect something with a little more substance and perspective.
Rather than calling anyone a coward, I will acknowledge that standing up for freedom is never easy. I know through direct personal acquaintance people who spent hard prison time during Taiwan's transition from dictatorship to democracy, who were arrested after leading peaceful public protest demonstrations of the kind that happen every day here in the United States. I have seen what kind of sustained effort--and, yes, individual courage--it takes to move a society from a default condition of tyranny to a default condition of freedom and rule by the people.<p>Rather than name-calling, let's learn how to fight for freedom. I posted yesterday, to NO upvotes,<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000</a><p>a link to the free online book From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation by Gene Sharp,<p><a href="http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf</a><p>an experienced activist and supporter of people power democratic movements that originated under some of the world's toughest dictatorships. We can learn a lot more from him and his writings and those of his collaborators<p><a href="http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html</a><p>than we can learn from anyone on Uncrunched or TechCrunch or any high-tech publication about how to win freedom even while under intense pressure from dictators. Try it. Don't decry anyone else for lacking courage. Build up your own courage. Build up your own effective communication with other freedom fighters, so that the movement for freedom has solidarity, unity of purpose, and resilience. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. (Anyone can participate: as a foreign student in Taiwan in the early 1980s, I was able to turn Chinese-language speech contests for foreign students into opportunities to express dissent from the dictatorship in the hearing of government officials of the dictatorship. This just takes courage and preparation.)
First they came for the terrorists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a terrorist.<p>Then they came for the whistle blowers, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a whistle blower.<p>Then they came for the illegal aliens, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not an illegal alien.<p>Then they came for the hackers--and there was no one left to speak for us.
I love the guilty-until-proven-innocent angle of these personal attacks against CEOs and companies.<p>There is literally no evidence anyone could produce which would prove to anyone's satisfaction that (a) Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc don't hand over every last shred of data they have to the NSA, the KGB, and whatever China's equivalent is, or that (b) the CEOs of the respective companies didn't personally sign off on every single violation of privacy while kicking puppies. Corporations can't have alibis. Mark Zuckerberg can't say, "Oh, I was in Cincinnati for the last 5 years, and I don't have cell coverage there, so I can't possibly have been involved."<p>I usually avoid defending billionaires, because they can dry their tears on their giant stacks of money, but so far this is just a he-said-she-said, and if all of the tech companies are saying they're innocent, it's the responsibility of the accusers to pony up some evidence they're guilty. Slide shows are one thing, but if you want to prove to me that the system does what you say it does, we need a document dump: millions of random emails, Facebook messages, whatever that have been illegally accessed through this system, which could plausibly not have been accessed without the kind of far reaching access that the tech giants are being accused of having provided.
<i>"Or to put it another way, who the hell needs “direct access” or “back doors” when companies are building “secure portals” for them instead?"</i><p>The extent of his confusion is breathtaking. Apparently very few people get what this is all about. The real question is this:<p>Does the government (a) mine content and/or metadata in these service providers' databases for suspect activity, or (b) can it only access specific accounts after naming the account holder?<p>What happened at Verizon is (a). Page and Zuckerberg say it's not what happens at Google and Facebook.<p>What Page and Zuckerberg meant when they were talking about "scale" is that the government cannot mine their databases for suspects. Not directly, not indirectly, not through a secure portal or in any other way.<p>The government can and does make requests (lots of them) to have specific accounts opened, and what Google/Facebook apparently do is to make that process technically more efficient via a secure portal.
There are cowards and then there are people who willfully exaggerate. A backdoor implies unfettered access to data for batch collection and processing. That's what this story was about at the beginning - the government was indiscriminately collecting and possibly analyzing your private data using some sort of massive, sinister Big Data operation, the scale of which we can not even conceive, and these big web companies were essentially handing them the keys to their telecommunications networks and telling them to go wild. This has been downgraded again and again, now to a few websites constructing a "secure mailbox." Most of us, including Arrington, know exactly what that means. A secure portal/mailbox is exactly what it sounds like: it is the equivalent of sending someone e-mail with a curated collection of data, except for instead of sending an e-mail you are posting it to a private web page accessible through some sort of authenticated login page. And if this data is only in response to a FISA warrant or subpoena and only regarding data posted by non-citizens, suddenly your outrage begins to look a little melodramatic, and what's happening begins to look a lot like what we already knew was happening for years. Just because we've known about it for years doesn't make it right, but can we at least admit that the novelty of the original story is long gone?
The system the NYTimes article outlines is still quite different from what the original leak suggested. According to the Times article, the requested data isn't placed into the locked mailbox until the FISA request is reviewed by somebody at the company. This is nowhere near the same level of access as what the PRISM leak suggested. So if what the Times article says is true, Zuckerberg and Page's statements weren't misleading at all. They really do "review each and every request."<p>The fact that they've built special systems for giving the government the data is not too surprising or scandalous. If I ran a site getting the same number of FISA requests that Google and Facebook presumably get, I'd probably also design a special system to make the process more convenient and secure. Short of openly challenging the NSA in court, this is probably the best response we could hope for. It gives the company control over what data is released and is much more secure than a back door which could be compromised.
Nice. Quote the NY Times article describing how things work, and fail to quote the bit where the employees tasked with responding to FISA orders, and who were possibly involved in the program, were legally not allowed to inform the CEO of what they were doing.<p>CEOs who are not informed can release statements indicating the depth of their ignorance without being deliberately dishonest.<p>That said, the alleged situation frankly astounds me. The government SHOULD NOT have employees at companies devoting company resources to projects that the people running those companies are not allowed to know about. But that is exactly what the NY Times claimed.
An article that waxes poetic, yet is so very hollow and devoid of realism.<p>What would you have these companies do? Band together in a mighty ring of technological resources and begin a Privacy Revolution?<p>This is unrealistic. As an American, I am saddened and angered by the recent news of the past two days. I am disgusted with what our government has done - what it has hidden from us, to take advantage of us unawares.<p>But we need to consolidate our anger. We have to aim it precisely, and arm ourselves against the proper enemy. It will not help the tech community to bicker amongst ourselves and be disappointed with CEOs for what the NSA has done. This community has great resources. Let those resources stand. Experts from every tech center in the country, across industries spanning finance, security, engineering, and many more - we are all pooled here. We can make an impact.<p>But not if we are busy attacking those whose positions we cannot possibly corroborate. Their hands were tied. In an ideal world, every man and woman would be consumed with a righteous fury and ignore whips, imprisonment and even death for the greater glory of what is right.<p>This is not that world. This is not idealism. The government wronged us. The government made the first move. The government forced their hands, made them cooperate by ratifying unethical conduct and making it illegal (and treasonous, as a violation of national security) to resist. Who would have acted differently in their position? And what would it have achieved?<p>I recognize that it is discomforting that we cannot simply believe tech leaders after what today's events have shown us. I get that. But they are not the ones who violated our privacy. They were the medium. That is not fair to them. If they made a mistake, it was only in trying to navigate perilous waters somewhere between honor and law. Unfortunately, the law is not on their side.<p>With Mark Zuckerberg jailed or Facebook sued by an insurmountable public agency, or Google's assets seized and its constituent leaders punished, who would be benefitted? Should we ask them to suffer and violate laws just for a truth that has come out only hours later?<p>If you want a takeaway from this, it's simple. It's unfair to hold people to expectations of high moral standing when they have unknown pressures put upon them. And in light of that, we need to remember who the true wrongdoers here are. If Larry and Zuckerberg have made mistakes, so be it. But know that they paled in comparison to the NSA, and that is our prime prerogative.
<p><pre><code> > Or to put it another way, who the hell needs “direct
> access” or “back doors” when companies are building
> “secure portals” for them instead?
</code></pre>
The primary argument against government agencies having direct access to private data is that it removes the data's caretaker from the decision-making process.<p>That is different from having an access portal for agencies to submit warrants or other legal requests. There is no obvious reason why a company should have an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants.<p>This article would have been much better if it had focused on the ethically dubious nature of FISA, and how problematic it is to interpret the fourth amendment as applying only to American citizens.<p>But that wouldn't have driven as many clicks.
Yup, because instead of expecting politicians who made the laws and judges who approved the FISA orders, let's call out the CEOs.<p>I don't even understand the outrage that most US citizens are showing at the moment for the said firms even after realizing that any access that may have been provided was through the channels that the governments had 'legally' set up. And that at least some of the companies had resisted. It seems very unfair to me, largely as an outsider and yet a stakeholder, that the only people who are being held accountable in the piece are the CEOs who had little to do with the fiasco.
"While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not."<p>This is the crux of the matter, but this statement is not strictly true. If a company only sent information on 1.44MB floppy disks, or started requiring NSA agents to run an obstacle course or something, they would be held in contempt of court. These requests have an implicit requirement of ease of access, and what that means is ultimately up to a judge's discretion.
I'd think most programmers can understand their reasoning behind creating "secure portals". If you're being forced to hand data over to the government you may as well do it securely and consistently.<p>Rather than some ad hoc process of burned CDs or USB drives, just create some simple software that makes the process secure, reliable, and traceable.<p>The alternative is USB drives and Fedex envelopes, which is harder to track and probably less secure.
Arrington is a drama queen IMHO, there are more important voices like the EFF, ACLU, et al to listen to on this issue. It's hard to trust where this indignation is clickbait fake, or real.
I can't believe that people are getting mad these private enterprises. If you want your government not to spy on you, tell THEM. The governments was made to serve the people. The companies are going to do what they think is their best fiduciary responsibility. Get mad at your representatives in congress, not your email providers.
What if companies that do not wish to do evil adopted unspoken signaling mechanism for silent protests? What if every time n NSLs were fulfilled since start of year, they donated to EFF? What if $1 was donated to EFF for every 1 GB of data they shared? Would that be illegal?
arrington needs friends in silicon valley a lot more than he needs your clicks. whatever you think of the man this is an honest and indignant post and it's an example of the courage he speaks of.<p>it is fascinating that this concept is so difficult for an otherwise intelligent community to grasp and a reminder of why we still need journalists.
If they are indeed aware of PRISM, I have a feeling that both Mark and Larry are avoiding legal action (or threats of legal action) made by the NSA. To me, that is the most likely reason for not "standing up" and coming out about the truth. To the best of my knowledge, they <i>do</i> fight heavily to keep their data out of government hands because these exact kind of situations are horrible for their companies' reputations.
Wait. That's <i>it</i>? That's <i>all</i> PRISM is--a special method of handing over information that is requested via court order?<p>Is this correct?
Look this article is ridiculous. I'm embarrassed with everyone that thinks this is some sort of conspiracy to hand over information to the government without process.<p>Both Google and Facebook hand over data for INDIVIDUALS when the government issues a lawful request (such as by subpoena or warrant). Subpoena's do not have judicial review the way warrants do, but they are not OPTIONAL. A company MUST comply under US laws if the government issues a lawful request.<p>Both Facebook and Google have lawyers on staff that carefully vet requests.<p>If you have an issue with how our F'in government asks for too much information, then take issue with our laws. You cannot fault Google or Facebook for obeying laws that you, through your representatives, put in place.<p>I am fully in support with restricting the power of the state to compel private information from corporations, but I certainly won't blame a corporation for obeying the law.<p>Now, let us tackle the issue of the so called "red carpet" rolled out for the government. When the government requests information Google and Facebook can send them the information on disk, on paper, on anything for that matter. The issue is that they want to keep YOUR information as secure as possible while handing it to the state. They want the state to have access to it, but NOT any third party.<p>How secure will your information be if they don't set up a secure drop for the government? Do you want them to set up one-off FTP sites? Do you want them to put the information on disk for hand over? We've already discussed that direct access to the source servers is a bad idea.<p>Do you see what I'm saying? This fucking author doesn't use his brain for two seconds. What options do Google and Facebook have to obey the law, and to keep your data as secure as possible from third parties.<p>Some people just want to cry wolf at every turn. And then when we really need to raise a fuss (like when Google removes XMPP support from messaging) we get no traction with the public, because the community just looks like a bunch of whiners.
<i>"What we have in our hands now is the first concrete proof of U.S.-based high-tech companies participating with the NSA in wholesale surveillance on us, the rest of the world, the non-American, you and me," he said.</i><p>- Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish software security firm F-Secure.<p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-surveillance-prism-idUSL5N0EJ3G520130607" rel="nofollow">http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-surveillanc...</a>
> Will you do it, Marissa? Or you, Ballmer? Or you, Armstrong? Will anyone stand up and say the truth? Will anyone stand up to the secret organization with the secret courts and, simply, do what’s right? Despite the consequences? Despite what your lawyers tell you?<p>Silly man. Exactly how hard is it to ask someone else, with way more to lose than you, to be a martyr for a cause <i>you</i> feel strongly about?
All it takes is one. One person with strong sense of the natural order of life and the courage to stand up. It may be scary as hell... I can appreciate that. However, everyone is born with the ability to reason. From reason we can innately sense what is right and wrong (not based on emotions). Do what is right, after all... if doing the right thing was easy, EVERYONE would do it.
You can't really use the way someone frames a sentence as evidence for guilt. The terminology they used, like back door, was simply what they were accused of having. And the nitpickiness of pointing out that they said direct access rather than access is, in my opinion, crossing the boundaries of reason. We know, and have known for years that these sites provide data to the US when required by law. That would be considered access, which could easily explain the terminology.<p>Just because it's not the most sensational story doesn't mean it's not the true one. If we're going the conspiracy theory route: what if the documents are phony? What if the leak was made up?<p>Basically, rather than wildly speculating based on he said she said and the framing of a sentence, why don't we try to be intelligent and wait for some real information. None of this speculation does any good.
I'm all for people getting their privacy, rah, rah. However, these leaders of companies are not free of obligations. What if you had your entire life savings in Google, Google broke the law by talking about what it is legally not allowed to do, and the stock plummeted due to the CEO being arrested? Or if the government just put a lot of oversight on them in the future and lost them a lot of business and cost them a lot of money verifying everything through lawyers (happens often after privacy violations, amusingly). Even if the leader of a company spoke with a good heart, if he broke the law and got the company in trouble, he is abandoning his duty to the company. I'd hope the board would remove him in this case, but even then there's still be a lot of damage.
Cute speech, but if you need to rely on the honesty or courage of CEOs of huge corporations (that are in the business of trading private info, no less) to step up and protect you from your government, then I wouldn't keep too much hope.<p>Imagine someone urging CEOs of Big Oil / Pharma / [0] corps to do the same? Would you take it seriously? "Someone in the Oil Industry should stand up because what the US is doing in the Middle East is wrong!"<p>To be clear, my point is not that it's wrong to demand this, or even that it's stupid (it is naive, but understandable).<p>The point is that this is something that an actual democracy should be able to solve because its <i>people</i> demand it. Not by relying on CEOs of powerful corporations to do the right thing.<p>[0] or farming, weapons/steel, the US prison industry ...
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, in the WaPo story: “information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect.<p>In the intelligence world, this is an important program. It is “among the most important and valuable” programs. That makes it a desirable project to work on. If you're in this industry, you want your name attached to this project. To get that kind of assignment, in addition to being smart and capable, you need to be seen as dedicated and loyal.<p>It's not impossible that a leaker will end up on such a project (indeed it seems to have just leaked). But the culture will select against anyone seen as a potential risk, in a variety of ways.
One thing to keep in mind about both Facebook and Google is that both were late arrivals to their respective markets... created by founders from elite schools who were able to get funded to build a "Cadillac" version of something that already existed.<p>This kind of entrepreneurial success is closer akin to being successful in finance and less about innovation than about mapping a set of ideas to a set of value props that appeal to holders of risk capital.<p>This is a highly "establishment" mindset... but since that doesn't make a compelling creation story, emphasis is placed on the riskiest and most personality-driven elements.<p>So it's perfectly expected that both firms act cautious and conservative in a situation like this.
According to Cnet, they are telling the truth, and not in some weasel word sense of it.
<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies&#x2F" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-of...</a>;<p>They are already standing up for freedom in the way that we would want them to.
<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587005-38/justice-department-tries-to-force-google-to-hand-over-user-data&#x2F" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587005-38/justice-depart...</a>;
There are some fundamental issues here that are upsetting, to say the least. It's a dark day when telling the truths illegal and I'm pretty sure that's not what was intended by the forefathers...<p>Re: cowards, It's easy to say that when you don't have skin in the game. These guys do and I too expect more of them but I can't fault them, nobody wants to go to prison. Something completely legal, completely within their rights and abilities that they can do is lobby and spend and campaign to end the patriot act and they are billionaires...
there is the fear of prosecution of course, but i think that plays less a part than the threat of how the market will react to a full confession that we're giving your data away (even if it's under the pretense of "safety" or whether you trust the data given is whole or in part).<p>so lets say Google admits, ok we give access to the gov to sift through your contacts...the vast amount of the population will say, that's messed up but will continue to use their services...who I do see leaving are the small segment of people who value their privacy and the technically savvy individuals who can roll their own services...those people could be the taste-makers of society and depending on whether you believe their influence, could pivot the market to a competitor.<p>of probably greater importance are the government and corporate entity of the world who now will be concerned with whether they should use Google for their own sensitive data knowing that a third-party (and in the case of nation states, an overly meddlesome competitor) can access it, who historically are also known to have difficulty holding onto data (ie, leaks). So there would be definite loss of trust there.<p>from my view, those are the greater risks for those particular CEOs...it could result in killing your own baby, as they are also the founders.
*"It is further ordered that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order."<p>But why is that stopping them? Do they really see themselves being dragged away, Bradley Manning style – to sit for years in a prison before even being given the dignity of a trial?<p>Because that’s not going to happen.<p>Please Google, hire Mike Arrington and task him to spill all your beans so he can put his butt behind his words instead of raindancing on the sidelines.
This is classic Prisoner's Dilemma.<p>If all of them come out at the same time - everybody benefits.<p>But if 1 of them screws everybody over, the screwed will be royally screwed.
Purely hypothetical: what if the government is doing this, the CEOs are aware the government is doing this, it's only happened, say three times, and they were given the personal opportunity to review the information requests, and they felt it was justified. Then what? Would they still be cowardly?
Well Page and Zuck may not be able to tell the truth about the action, but they have enough clout to fight the Gag law itself. i.e. They could lead publicly rally's/protest against the gag laws and they could be really effective in this without breaking the law.... And yet still, they do not.
The CEO answers to shareholders, not users. A CEO of a company with shareholders is not a living organism with the possibility of having a moral compass but instead a (don't snicker) machine, one that makes deterministic (ultimately predictable) decisions.
What I find odd isn't that they don't tell the truth. I never expected them to. That they didn't remain silent on the issue is odd though. What can denying possibly gain them at this point other than tanking their credibility?
It seems like I am in the minority here but I see nothing wrong with making a required government process more efficient. The companies in question would have to provide this information anyways and streamlining the process seems logical.
I think the whole thing becomes even more of a farce when you read quotes like this on the BBC news<p>> Meanwhile, the BBC has learned that Twitter was invited to join the Prism programme last year but rejected the approach from US authorities.
Danny Sullivan, who is a good source on search issues, thinks it was a check in check out system based on FISA requests. The point about not being able to mention FISA requests is then a 1st Amendment issue not 4th.
Sorry, I have not been following this thing at all but why do they think Google is lying? The new "top headline story" doesn't link to anything for me.
@Pinboard: "If any of these companies had spine, they would have sent the data they were ordered to disclose on iomega zip drives. Click click click"<p>This.
All,<p>Can somebody compile Non-US alternatives for email, search,etc?<p>On top of my mind :
Search : yandex.com
Google Docs : zoho.com
Email : fastmail.fm (Paid)
Google CLO responding to the NYT et al:<p><i>We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box. Nor have we received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media. It is quite wrong to insinuate otherwise. We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. And we have taken the lead in being as transparent as possible about government requests for user information.</i><p><a href="https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq</a>
At this point, we are just guessing.<p>* Backbone route<p>* SSL, MIM hack<p>* indirect access like real-time backups.<p>* sudo RO access via vpn<p>* Remote Access to BigTable queries<p>* Team inside the company<p>* What china does.<p>Gotto love lawyers. They harp on the most ambiguous term.<p>Cowardice is an accurate term to describe ferengi, not to mention unpatriotic.<p>Who wants to give up the Jacuzzi ?