Google, Apple and Facebook Deny Participating In Alleged NSA “PRISM” Program

http://marketingland.com/google-apple-facebook-deny-nsa-prism-program-47323

by rasterizer • 13 years ago

201 97 13 years ago

betterunix4• 13 years ago

We do not provide direct access to our servers. We just have a system that sends copies of our data to their servers. We really do care about your privacy!

rasterizer3• 13 years ago

Why aren't the rest of the companies on that list issuing false denials if that's the case?

tyre• 13 years ago

They will in time. HN has been hit with links to new stories as each denies the 'direct access to their servers.' First came Google, then Apple, now Facebook.

Regardless, they are purposefully missing the point. The average citizen isn't upset by the means of the private information sharing, but that it is going on in the first place. It is that 'providing only information required by law' sounds limiting, but if the law makes clever use of language to access a huge amount of data then that phrase doesn't mean anything.

throwaway4202• 13 years ago

Exactly. Everybody can obviously read these companies' very carefully worded denials for themselves and see that there's enough wiggle room to drive a bus through.

Sven73• 13 years ago

Even if they are getting all this data(and they most likely have access), I find it highly improbable that the govt has access to the human resources (R&D/Engineering) required, to produce something useful.

Just think about the teams they have to put together to build even reasonably useful tools.

Natsu• 13 years ago

One other possibility comes to mind: aren't these companies currently challenging some NSLs in court? Or is my memory bad on that one?

rasterizer3• 13 years ago

Google flatout says "no backdoors".

betterunix4• 13 years ago

Sending a copy of data to someone is not the same as creating a back door.

aspensmonster• 13 years ago

And what he described wasn't a back door.

droopyEyelids• 13 years ago

All these denials cover one specific thing that they're not doing, not the spirit of all things that could be done. Mirroring all traffic to an additional destination isn't providing a back door, but it accomplishes much of the same function.

monkmartinez2• 13 years ago

Google specifically says "no back doors". Why use a back door when the front door works... try before you pry.

brown9-23• 13 years ago

Google provides portals for law enforcement to search their data given the proper clearance/warrants. This is what the Chinese were rumored to hack into with the Aurora stuff.

These communications people are playing word games. These companies turn over and give access to whatever they are legally required to.

lurchpop2• 13 years ago

But doesn't mention the front door.

jlgreco3• 13 years ago

"Door" implies something that is designed to occasionally be in some sort of "closed" state.

flyinRyan7• 13 years ago

Thy also have a motto of "Do no evil". Just because they say something doesn't mean it's true.

btilly3• 13 years ago

We do not provide direct access to our servers. We just have a system that sends copies of our data to their servers. We really do care about your privacy!

Lest people think this is a joke, this is EXACTLY what the telecoms did under Bush that lead to Congress passing retroactive telecom immunity. Predictable outrage this time looks to me like outrage then, and I have no reason to believe that we won't see a similar legislative response.

That said, in Google's case I believe them. This is the company that is going to court to stop the government from trying to get information about Google users with warrantless national security letters.

FB on the other hand, I would expect to see providing technical support to the FBI about how to use their in house tools to more quickly analyze the dumps...

pyre3• 13 years ago

  | FB on the other hand, I would expect to see
  | providing technical support to the FBI about
  | how to use their in house tools to more quickly
  | analyze the dumps...

According to Mark Zuckerberg:

  "Having two identities for yourself is an example
   of a lack of integrity"

I'm surprised that he didn't beg the government to peruse his data to weed out all these 'phonies' that are polluting his perfect system.

[Only half-joking]

rdtsc4• 13 years ago

> Congress passing retroactive telecom immunity.

A very telling fact was that Obama was one of those voting for it as well. That told me at least who Obama was. I was never fooled by his hope and change rhetoric, that one action said all I wanted to know before he even started running for pres.

Here is Sen Obama's 2008 reason for flip flopping on the issue:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/20/obama-backs-bill-gi...

--- "Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance - making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. ---

Locke1689• 13 years ago

This is not true of Microsoft's statement.

downandout2• 13 years ago

Yes, it's rather telling that each denial used the exact same "direct access" terminology. It's not like this contingency wouldn't have been planned for - they all knew the gravity of their decision to enter into this. Those statements were likely provided to them by the Justice Department when they first came on board with PRISM in the event that the program ever came to light. A creative US Attorney likely concluded that this would be a legally defensible statement, even if it is wholly misleading.

rdtsc4• 13 years ago

> Yes, it's rather telling that each denial used the exact same "direct access" terminology.

Yap, it seems as if they got a set of "talking points". They can use certain words and phrases and still given some technicality get away with telling "truth" while effectively also telling lies.

Some say how NSL (national security letters) are pretty draconian and imply personal liability for disclosure. And that is true perhaps but at the same time these agencies do want to get some cooperation and are perhaps willing to "help out" their co-conspirators so PR departments I imagine get a cheat-sheet -- "use these phrases as responses".

janardanyri• 13 years ago

These are obviously not actual denials given how carefully they're worded.

dshibarshin• 13 years ago

Does the NSA really need to have an agreed upon backdoor to have the ability to access the information they seek?

mtgx• 13 years ago

Most of these use encrypted communications. NSA may be able to crack specific communications, but they can't crack all of them from Google, Skype, Facebook, iMessage in real time.

Getting access to it "voluntarily" makes thing so much easier. It says in the slides the PRISM program only costs them $20 million a year.

nwh• 13 years ago

I wager they have control of many root CAs. They could literally MITM any connection they want to.

rdtsc4• 13 years ago

Most importantly, if they can crack and get the information they most likely can't use it unless there is an imminent and grave danger to the government's ability to stay in power. Because then using it would reveal their abilities.

Now there is a system that can be used for example. That system is once NSA identifies the list of suspects they forward that record to a another agency (FBI?) who then is in charge of finding other evidence, which could have plausibly be found anyway, and prosecute based on that. They can never release the initial reason why they got "interested" in someone as that might reveal the abilities of the NSA.

chris_mahan• 13 years ago

What if the terms of PRISM means that if asked, the company must deny any knowledge of it or of sharing data... And that the existence of such denial order must also be denied.

smokeyj• 13 years ago

The first rule of PRISM and NSLs is you DO NOT TALK about PRISM and NSLs.

brown9-23• 13 years ago

Of course they wouldn't know about the project name that the NSA uses internally.

ekianjo• 13 years ago

What is the denial worth if, anyway, these companies are obliged by the secret agreement not to reveal the fact that they participate in it?

monkmartinez2• 13 years ago

Deny, deny, deny... it will all blow over in a few days... makes me sick.

stdgy• 13 years ago

1) Considering these programs may be authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts, and thus may be legal, none of these responses are actually denials. Far from it.

2) Moreover, if the alleged companies were knowingly providing user data to the US government as members of the PRISM program, they would be unable to confirm or deny this fact because it would be illegal for them to do so. The orders for compliance are accompanied with gag orders.

elathan2• 13 years ago

I don't now if the graph is real (http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video...), but Microsoft bought Skype in 2011. :)

Buzaga• 13 years ago

nice catch

lurchpop2• 13 years ago

removed. mirror?

thomasjoulin• 13 years ago

I guess this : http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video...

jlgreco3• 13 years ago

Your link appears to be broken.

koyote• 13 years ago

And the acquisition also generated a lot of bewilderment from nearly everyone in the industry.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders how much PRISM had to do with the acquisition of Skype...

eksith2• 13 years ago

  Email		: GPG/PGP (The End!)
  Web		: Tor (Browser bundle)
  Voice/Txt	: RedPhone, Silent Circle, Cellcrypt, TrustCall, TextSecure
  Data		: TrueCrypt, Scramdisk, PGPDisk

We can all pretend this is still a Democracy (it's not and never has been; it's a Representative Republic and our representatives are mostly evil and/or stupid) and think those who have power will relinquish it voluntarily or you can actually do something about your own privacy.

Edit: Dear God, I feel like I'm turning into Stallman! (Which, on closer inspection, may be a good thing)

pyre3• 13 years ago

  Email: PGP-encryped.
  Browsing Traffic: Routed through Tor
  Voice/Text: Encrypyed.
  Other Sensitive Data: TrueCrypt Hidden Partition

  Seeing your interrogator pull out a rubber hose,
  and realize that none of that matters: Priceless

----

  | think those who have power will relinquish
  | it voluntarily

Yea. It was pretty crazy when the Secret Service sided with GW Bush and the Marines sided with Obama, and Bush made his last stand to retain the Presidency at the Oval Office. I don't look forward to when/if Obama is voted out of office...

drivebyacct23• 13 years ago

>Yea. It was pretty crazy when the Secret Service sided with GW Bush and the Marines sided with Obama, and Bush made his last stand to retain the Presidency at the Oval Office. I don't look forward to when/if Obama is voted out of office...

I feel stupid. What are you talking about? Or is this a joke scenario or something? Sorry if I'm being daft.

ianstormtaylor• 13 years ago

Pretty sure you misinterpreted what OP meant by "power". Sure Bush left office when his term ended, but Obama continued a lot of the policies we thought were going to be ended, keeping the NSA in a greater position of power than it should be. That's the power that hasn't been relinquished.

> If the people in office get voted out, they leave. If they didn't, we might have a problem.

No, as evidenced by the our current situation, we still have a problem.

sneak2• 13 years ago

Nobody uses PGP.

eksith2• 13 years ago

One-time-pads and carrier pigeons then!

Seriously, I don't really care how people take their privacy into their own hands (as long as they don't harm anyone), but this ridiculous theme of "you have nothing to hide and/or [insert bit of data] isn't really private anyway" is starting to become a real bore.

BTW... I understand the shortcomings of OTPs (and pigeons; I live in New York), but I don't see why it's not used more often. I mean secure distribution of pads is starting to look like the least vulnerable link in the chain at this point.

Besides, generating an OTP is fairly trivial.

http://eksith.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/cryptographically-sec...

mahyarm2• 13 years ago

I'm trying to find something that does:

* OTR * Works on iOS & Android * Is Free * Works well (doesn't crash) * Does push notifications

Hopefully cryptocat will be that soon.

induscreep2• 13 years ago

ChatSecure for iOS does that, plus it's open source and free.

mortehu• 13 years ago

Remember that PGP does not encrypt headers, so it doesn't hide the recipient list, the sender or the subject line. In some implementations, it may not encrypt attachments.

leoh• 13 years ago

If there weren't a hard-document supporting the spying, it seems to be Verizon would deny any NSA ties, too. And it gets worse: there's a good chance that upper management at Verizon didn't even know about the NSA program, anyways, let alone spokespeople.

sneak2• 13 years ago

These sorts of orders are all gag-ordered by default. They have to lie to everyone about their existence, including co-workers and spouses, or they go immediately to jail.

It's individual criminal liability for disclosing. They are literally required to dodge under federal law to stay out of jail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter#Doe_v....

rdtsc4• 13 years ago

Wonder if they are ever subpoenaed in court to testify about it, if they lie they commit perjury if they tell they truth they break the rules of the NSL.

At the same time the govt probably does want them to cooperate, and doesn't want it to be a completely adversarial situation. I can see them buttering these companies up and offering "talking points" on how to specifically dodge these kind of questions. For example Dept. of State have media training, they set up adversarial training situations with fake role playing journalists asking "tough" questions then train employees to dodge them successfully. Very useful.

Same here I can see maybe PR spokespeople are urged maybe to say "we are not spying" because maybe the word "spying" has a specific meaning and given some technicality what they are doing is not "spying", stuff like that. Kind of like NSA has been saying they are not looking at everyone's emails. Well they are not people doing that, it all gets archived and stored probably based on some pattern. So they can clearly and proudly say they are not "reading" our information.

hga• 13 years ago

"Wonder if they are ever subpoenaed in court to testify about it, if they lie they commit perjury if they tell they truth they break the rules of the NSL."

That would only come into play if they're partly immunized and compelled to testify, in the Congress or a grand jury; otherwise they could plead the 5th.

drivebyacct23• 13 years ago

Oh NSLs, I'll be on my death bed with a six page rant about how much I hate you someday. (Old debate topic)

I'm not sure that PRISM==NSLs but I'm sure you're absolutely right that PRISM involves a gag.

Besides, these are largely non-statements by these companies. "No direct access" != "No access", etc.

flyinRyan7• 13 years ago

It should be illegal to have gag orders at this level. "We're going to abuse our power and make it illegal for you to tell anyone". Imagine if they make a law that they can just rape people and it's illegal to tell anyone.

julianozen• 13 years ago

Wow. Look at the beautiful apple bullshit. Cause they've never "heard of prism specifically" cause the government never called it that. And of course apple never gave the government access to the servers. They just handed the data over

downandout2• 13 years ago

Well, these denials were just proven to be false by a statement issued by James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence. The statement confirms the existence and active use of the program, though he insists that the data is only used for targeting non-US persons. Here is his statement:

"The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies.

Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States.

Activities authorized by Section 702 are subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and Congress. They involve extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.

Section 702 was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate.

Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.

The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans."

In any event, each of these denials were just refuted by the man in charge of the program. So much for trusting anything any of these companies say ever again.

nostrademons• 13 years ago

Most likely: the name "PRISM" is made up (or was never revealed to tech companies), and so when you ask any of the tech companies involved, they're like "Huh? What?"

btilly3• 13 years ago

I do not see where in James Clapper's statement there is a claim that Google, Apple or FB participated in PRISM.

That said, the only way I can square his statement with the facts is that when you collect information on EVERYONE, then you haven't targeted ANYONE in particular. Which is exactly what this warrant enables the FBI to do.

Also it should be noted that all denials have included the admission that companies are forced to comply with lawful requests. A request that comes complete with a warrant from a judge will be usually seen as lawful, even though there might be issues with the warrant. Thus a company could "only comply with lawful requests" and also turn over all of their data under a warrant like this.

That said, Google has been vocal enough in protesting government attempts to troll through its data that I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. But I think that we'll soon have more details.

Google, Apple and Facebook Deny Participating In Alleged NSA “PRISM” Program

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