Tech companies, bristling, concede to government surveillance program

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-bristling-concede-to-government-surveillance-efforts.html

by rdl • 13 years ago

262 161 13 years ago

nytimes.com

chris_mahan• 13 years ago

Twitter said no? I like twitter more!

weisser• 13 years ago

Twitter by nature is very public messaging platform and therefore this data is less private.

I'd be curious how many DMs are sent compared to public tweets.

rdl2• 13 years ago

Plus anything on SMS can already be monitored easily in the clear at the telco level. Most of the "interesting" twitter users are probably using SMS.

nostromo• 13 years ago

Don't forget about IP addresses and all of the data about what websites you're viewing thanks to their widgets.

Mystalic2• 13 years ago

This is a lesson in the power of language. The companies involved and their denials of knowledge of PRISM were not lies, but clearly they were making it easier for the government to extract data for surveillance, under an unnamed program with specific point people in each company who were only allowed to talk to the government and not talk to their CEOs about the extent in which the government was extracting data. It may go even deeper. We just don't know.

The thing that upsets me most is that I suspect nobody except for the whistleblower will take any real heat. I hope more will come forward with more details in the coming weeks, before the government makes an example of the whisteblower.

Will this incident change user behavior? I doubt it. We're too dependent on these companies to cut them off en masse.

ritchiea4• 13 years ago

I dunno, it sounds to me like the companies in question were being hit with a lot of government requests and they did the natural thing to take them seriously and make it easy for their employees to deal with: make an API for it and automate the parts of the process that can be automated.

It is inevitable they are going to be hit with requests for information, they could dig their heels in on some things but ultimately they legally have to provide some of the information requested. They could have implemented APIs without any idea of how the NSA structured or code named the technology internally on the NSA's side. And I'm sure Google, Facebook, et al implemented whatever they implemented with little knowledge of how other companies were complying or not.

What I imagine happened is that any company that took compliance seriously, likely for their own staff's benefit, as a side effect became a stronger asset to the NSA than companies like Twitter who resisted.

And lastly, I'm not saying any of this is good. It just seems extremely plausible and not part of a massive conspiracy to give the NSA access to as much data as possible.

Mystalic2• 13 years ago

I don't think there's a conspiracy here. Just bad decisions.

glenra3• 13 years ago

It just seems extremely plausible and not part of a massive conspiracy to give the NSA access to as much data as possible.

Wait, why can't it be both of those things? What could the phrase "massive conspiracy" mean if it doesn't apply to a situation like this?

"conspiracy" suggests a bunch of people were trying to accomplish a goal in secret, at odds with the interests of the general public. Yup!

"massive" implies significant scale - that it was a LOT of people sharing a LOT of information. Check!

I'm not seeing anything missing...

startupfounder• 13 years ago

"This is a lesson in the power of language."

Yes!

What exactly is being said, but more importantly what is not being said? Zuck's post was 169 words on one of the most important stories to break about privacy and tech companies.

_delirium• 13 years ago

In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.

If true, that would explain the very carefully worded language of both Google and Facebook that they did not give the NSA "direct access" to their servers.

Q6T46nT668w6i3m• 13 years ago

In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a tech company’s headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed software on the company’s server and remained at the site for several weeks to download data to an agency laptop.

Uh, wow.

waterlesscloud3• 13 years ago

Sounds like...direct access.

runn1ng• 13 years ago

So THAT is why all the responses repeated "direct access".

mpyne• 13 years ago

Does this mean I was right? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843029

rdl2• 13 years ago

Probably, although IMO this was pretty obvious from the $20mm budget. The only question was "is it a repurposing of the existing law enforcement API" or something slightly unique, and was it "Google/FB in the loop" or totally automated.

NSA presumably wouldn't want most Google employees to know they're FISAing info on KSM. They may be willing to read in a few Google employees to handle turning over the data, though.

There may be some special magic to hide the actual target from Google while Google still gets to review the order itself. (the name of the target is presumably non-meaningful to Google).

cromwellian• 13 years ago

So basically, PRISM is just a system for negotiating electronic dead-drop locations to pick up data when companies are compelled by an NSL to archive and copy an individuals data? If it were done by printing out the data and dropping a physical box in a pre approved location, would be be as scandalous?

What are we to believe PRISM is now? Is it

a) a firehose feed that allocates arbitrary, indisriminate, ad-hoc querying over large swaths of user data in cloud datacenters?

b) is it an automated system for sending out National Security Letters, and the polling dropbox locations for compliance, and then importing the data into some centralized government intelligence repository?

a) is an absolute outrage, there should be rioting in front of congress and the whitehouse

b) is pretty much just making delivery of information they are compelled to legally deliver more efficient. Although if I were these companies, I'd make it as painful as possible by printing all of the information requested on sheets of paper in Comic Sans and mailing it USPS.

spydum2• 13 years ago

Is mailing hard copies more secure? I tend to think of phone calls and hard copies as less secure.

c0nfused• 13 years ago

I don't particularly mind the security implications of the technique. However, It certainly is less convenient if you are the recipient.

Achshar2• 13 years ago

It's easy, we encode encrypted audio data in binary, print out the 0s and 1s on an eco friendly paper and send the bundle off in mail. It is pretty secure since they will be the only one with private key.</s>

msabalau• 13 years ago

Just because the system described in the article exists, is there any reason to believe that it is PRISM? Couldn't PRISM be something the NSA is doing in addition to this?

RWeaver• 13 years ago

Could it be both? Most network monitoring systems specifically don't want to modify the network data, so "direct access" is undesirable anyway. It seems Google, FB and others are compelled to duplicate all data (including real time data) specified in the FISA, which is basically everything, into these special portals. Then the agencies can access whatever they want carte blanche from the duplicate environments without alerting sysadmins on the production servers. And the CEOs can say they don't have direct access and haven't heard the word PRISM before.

leoc4• 13 years ago

FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said. There were 1,856 such requests last year, an increase of 6 percent from the year before.

From the NYT story seems that PRISM is more b) than a). However, I suppose the remaining questions are:

1) To what extent did these automated processes for reducing the burden of handling FISA requests enable the total quantity of data requested through FISA requests to increase? "Quantity has a quality all its own."

2) How extensive are these broad-sweep FISA requests now, and to what extent do they falsify the impression that FISAs are "lawful, specific orders about individuals" (Google), "orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers" (Microsoft)? In other words, that each individual FISA request covers only one person or a handful of people, so for example the number of people intruded on by FISAs last year is some reasonably small multiple of 1,856?

3) To what extent could the compartmentalisation of FISA information to a few employees, combined with the streamlining process and broad FISA requests, mean that the CEOs have less awareness than they thought about just how broad the FISA net really casts by now? Or instead are they happy not to know, or happy to be able to pretend not to know?

In other words, is PRISM b) in principle but something closer to a) in practise, and if so who knew?

venomsnake• 13 years ago

Automated system for NSL letters will work a lot like automated system for DMCA takedowns. And we know how fine that turned out.

spydum2• 13 years ago

Maybe it is just me, but could PRISM just refer to secure portals where data that was summoned from a FISA request (either as spartan as access logs, or as deep as emails, depending on provider), could be securely delivered upon collection? It doesn't have to describe the actual COLLECTION system, just the exchange between government and corporation. As someone has just mentioned, a secure Dropbox. Just as if they had a legitimate search warrant for details, you would hope they had a secure way of providing that information to the requesting agency.

aiiane• 13 years ago

The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.

That sounds to me like PRISM is in fact just a name for an overall consistent system of routing data from specific individual requests.

richardowright• 13 years ago

Something still doesn't add up for me on this.

1. How does this explanation relate to the slide that the US is the World's Telecommunication Backbone? The only explanation I can think of is that Google, etc... were only providing information for servers that were physically in the US.

2. How does this prism name relate to the program? To me, the prism name seems more linked to fiber optic cable than to this sort of data monitoring. Perhaps it's an allusion to splitting the data stream and reflecting it to the NSA.

leoc4• 13 years ago

Yes, the second slide from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...; sounds more like this http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html doesn't it?

Officials would not discuss details of the overcollection problem because it involves classified intelligence-gathering techniques. But the issue appears focused in part on technical problems in the N.S.A.’s ability at times to distinguish between communications inside the United States and those overseas as it uses its access to American telecommunications companies’ fiber-optic lines and its own spy satellites to intercept millions of calls and e-mail messages.

Maybe the second slide in the WaPo selection refers to the wiretapping operations, the third and later ones reproduced by WaPo refer to the "FISA API" operations involving Google, MS, Facebook etc. and the transition between the two topics is in the omitted slides between 2 and 3.

danso7• 13 years ago

If I'm reading the OP correctly, then, based solely on what they've reported, it seems that the denials made by FB and Google were not only truthful, but sincere (as opposed to being either weaselly or outright dishonest or both)...Here's the key passage:

---

* “The U.S. government does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centers,” Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement on Friday. “We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law.”*

Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the same distinction.

But instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.

The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.

Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company.

---

The NYT is talking only about FISA requests, which are a secret process but, as far as everything reported about that process has said, targets individuals. Moreover, when FISA is used on Americans, it's a process that involves a court-approved warrant.

So you can argue that FISA is wrong or that it is administered with a rubber stamp (and in my opinion, yes, this is most definitely worth scrutinizing, and it has been for however many years it's been put in place), or that no ethical company should ever comply with a FISA request...but that's not the same ballpark as what's being alleged with Verizon or with PRISM.

The point about these companies making it "easier" by creating a systematic delivery process, such as a "lockbox", to send over the requested data is an interesting detail, but kind of a non sequitur. Either FISA is OK or it is flat out wrong...what does it matter which digital process is set up to fulfill that request?

rsingel• 13 years ago

FISA is not just about spying on Americans.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 granted the government the right to order communication providers to give the government content on foreigners with a broad, non-particularized court order.

This is what PRISM is. The order requires companies to provide assistance and facilities.

A traditional FISA warrant names a citizen or foreigner specifically. A warrant is always needed for this kind of surveillance, but the target is rarely, if ever, told (unlike with a criminal wiretap).

In short, the 2008 Amendment allows the NSA to order companies to help with bulk collection. It's section 702.

knowtheory• 13 years ago

This basically sounds like Dropbox for Feds. Probably more secure than either Dropbox or the Feds, though.

DIRECT ACCESS ZOMG :P

throwaway420• 13 years ago

The phrase "direct access" is absolutely weaselly language.

It leaves open the possibility that however "indirect access" is defined is how they get their info.

danso7• 13 years ago

However...Google cannot promise that it doesn't give indirect access. They've admitted openly that they comply to tens of thousands of data requests over the years.

zaroth• 13 years ago

I think this article shows exactly how two-faced the denials made by FB and Google really are. The NYT is talking about PRISM here, which is implemented via FISA.

While it's possible that NSA does not have "completely unfettered" access to all Google/Facebook/Microsoft databases, it's obvious that they have direct access to a system which provides real-time data. For example in the case of monitoring Skype conversations (voice, video, data), email, and web searches, of a previously identified target. Yes, they sign off at the start, and then they let the system RUN.

Of course data is sent "automatically" and "in bulk" but by themselves these words mean little to nothing. I think the question is do they even bother identifying foci for the search? For Verizon "meta-data" they didn't bother, they just suck it all up. Note well, that URLs are considered "meta-data", even though in most cases they fully describe the content. Note well, GPS location of your phone is "meta-data".

A true and honest debate about whether we want to live under this type of "total surveillance" would require a lot of education for the average American to understand what these systems are truly capable of. Senators Wyden and Udell have been whispering warnings for years, but even they are gagged by FISA. It's so insulting to hear Obama claim he welcomes debate on the subject, while he continues to obfuscate the true scope of the surveillance.

If the PRISM slides are accurate about the "2 degrees of separation" then even targeting an individual at the start is meaningless. 2 degrees of separation along what axis? You think it's just 2 degrees of "sent mail"? There are spooks who do nothing but think about this shit all day long... "Two degrees of separation" could mean the warrant automatically broadens itself up to 2 hops from the foci, based on any "contact" along:

- Outgoing / Incoming email

- Facebook, Skype, Google Groups, contact lists

- IRC channel members

- Common web searches

- Common URLs visited

- Common brick & mortor shops visited

You can taint a LOT of people with only 2 degrees of separation if you starting thinking along multiple dimensions of contact.

It's specifically this "social network" which the FBI is interested in. You need these "support systems" installed at Google/Facebook/Microsoft if you want to build the graph out efficiently. The document was leaked, the government acknowledged how vital and important they believe it is for them to have access to this data. I'm not sure what more do you need to see?

Frankly, the blog posts the way they are worded don't deny anything at all. If Google was willing and able, they could tell us unequivocally the process, format, and scope of the data they share with the NSA. A Google Analytics for "NSA Spook Activity, Quarterly". Then we can start to have the "public debate".

danso7• 13 years ago

Wait...how is it "obvious" that "they have direct access to a system which provides real-time data"...? Isn't that direct access what Google and Facebook are said to have explicitly denied?

The NYT doesn't seem to be talking about PRISM here. It seems to be talking about FISA. From the WaPo and Guardian's reports, I thought that PRISM was concocted as a response to what the NSA saw as "shortcomings" in FISA?

Achshar2• 13 years ago

when FISA is used on Americans, it's a process that involves a court-approved warrant.

What? So not being a US citizen makes us second class citizens in game of online privacy? That's ridiculous. And no, these requests were not just for individual foreign users.

FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said.

from the OP.

Who gives the US government the right to see my online private data without my consent? esp when I am not even a US citizen.

jstevens85• 13 years ago

From the article:

FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said.

Looks like personal data could be turned over (well, at least part of your search history) even if you're not being targeted individually.

chaz• 13 years ago

This article seems to make the most sense. As a hypothetical example, Google might have been manually fulfilling thousands of FISA requests. It sucked up time, took engineering resources, was error-prone, and lacked the legal paper trail to track such requests. In addition, the government wanted something faster, that used fewer agents to submit/collect data, and could more easily get updates.

So one day, an NSA agent negotiates with Google to build fisarequest.supersecret.google.com. NSA agents can directly upload FISA request documents, as easily as submitting expense receipts. In turn, Google's legal department can view each request and decide to comply with the click of a mouse, as easily as approving an expense report. If authorization is granted, the NSA can now view the emails of the requested user, and new emails can simply be viewed with a refresh of the browser. As Schmidt and Drummond say, Google can decline a request if it's improper or overly broad, and ask for additional information -- again, as easily as a manager looking at a questionable minibar expense on a trip report.

Said NSA agent does this with multiple companies, internally brands this as PRISM, puts together a Powerpoint deck, and declares victory. It's "direct access" since it's coming straight from Google and on a Google server, and it's "real-time" in that a request can be authorized quickly, and there are no more .zip files with data dumps involved.

Google has never actually heard of PRISM, and only knows that they built a tool to make it easier to do what they were already doing with legal FISA requests. To them, the NSA doesn't have "direct access," which is a loaded term for unfettered superuser access.

The entire program costs only $20mm because the government now requires only a few agents to submit requests and collect data. The cost of building the tools is borne by the companies, who see it as a cheaper way to comply with an existing legal obligation.

Jabbles• 13 years ago

This is the best explanation I've seen so far. It requires no one to lie. The Washington Post inferred too much from the evidence it had, but I'm thankful this debate has occurred. The NSA denies that it has broad access, the companies deny it, individuals at those companies also deny it. Obama denies it. All of them speak truthfully.

The EFF publishes a timeline of when companies decided to streamline their own access requests, which may well be perfectly truthful.

danso7• 13 years ago

This is pretty much what I think, knowing no more than what anyone here knows. It's reasonable to argue that NSA-issued request are wrong, period, but that's different from saying that Google is actively assisting them in a para-legal process...not only out of Constitutional concerns, but because building such a backdoor necessarily creates security risks to users, NSA targets or not.

In my layman's opinion, building such a backdoor in an infrastructure as complicated as Google's would require a team as well as an oversight group...someone has to write tests for that "feature" and someone else has to make sure those tests aren't seen by those who don't need to know (I.e. the rest of Google's sizable test department)...this kind if arrangement would seemingly have to be known by someone on the executive team.

ig1• 13 years ago

Google has specifically stated that they don't take this ("drop box") approach:

"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."

revelation• 13 years ago

Wow, one second of unconcentrated reading, and a bunch of weasel words fly right through the blood barrier into your brain.

They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests.

Really, NYT? More securely? And the users, they are all foreign? And all the government requests, deemed lawful from the outset?

Come on, at this point, are they even trying with the balanced reporting thing? Tech companies may be bristling, but the NYT is surely lodged in the government wing.

enraged_camel4• 13 years ago

Lately, I've come to realize that the September 11 attacks actually destroyed America.

In the grand scheme of things, the attacks themselves caused minimal damage and casualties. We're only talking about ~3,000 deaths and ~$30 billion damage.

But look at the aftermath. The Iraq War itself cost the USA $5 trillion, and another ~4,500 lives (American lives, that is. The total number of casualties is well over 100,000). At home, the PATRIOT Act enabled countless breaches of freedom, and the TSA has cost untold number of hours wasted at airports. And now this NSA bullshit.

All of this is beyond Osama bin Laden's wildest dreams. The guy just organized a couple of airplanes to be rammed into the WTC towers. Heck, he didn't even expect them to go down, and was pleasantly surprised when it happened. In light of all the freedoms America lost since then though, he must be dancing in his grave right now.

tptacek12• 13 years ago

This is an understandable but ahistorical perspective. There was a time not long ago when wiretaps weren't yet considered searches, and where voicing support for communism could get you dragged in front of a tribunal. The ideals of this country aren't an end-state; they're a goal that we will constantly struggle to achieve.

danso7• 13 years ago

Yeah, this cannot be emphasized enough. I know it was a long time ago, but how can anyone say that "Well, this country has truly fallen into a shithole" when, for about a hundred years, we were OK with enslaving an entire race of people, and justified it out of desire for economic stability?

Ideals take time and perseverance...thank goodness for organizations like the ACLU and the EFF

sillysaurus4• 13 years ago

That's a fine-sounding statement, but unfortunately the September 11th attacks did destroy the America many of us grew up in. It gave the perfect excuse for unprecidented empire expansion into the Middle East, and expansion of domestic power far beyond anything balanced or reasonable, all in the name of safety. Which is to say, in the name of terror.

newnewnew3• 13 years ago

If we're going to discuss McCarthyism, we need to remember that the US government was riddled with soviet spies during the Roosevelt administration[1][2][3][4]. Communist spies outside of government were also instrumental to soviet espionage efforts, including the theft of nuclear technology[5][6]. McCarthy was responding to real threats, although my high school history class didn't talk much about them. Members of the Communist Party USA were instrumental in the Soviets obtaining weapons to destroy life as we know it and the lesson we take from the period is that McCarthy was a bad guy.

McCarthy wrote a book arguing that the Soviet Union was the real winner of WWII[7], thanks to the help of willing US accomplices. Looking at the map of Europe before and after the war you have to admit the guy has a case. But who would read a book by Joseph McCarthy?

[1] http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/harry-dexter-white/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Silvermaster

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlo_group

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Rosenberg

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers

[7] http://foseti.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/review-of-americas-re...;

grandalf4• 13 years ago

However never before has there been such tremendous propaganda effort designed to conceal from public view policies that have been considered morally abhorrent for decades.

lawnchair_larry2• 13 years ago

Just curious, has this whole issue led you to at least entertain the thought that CISPA might be worse than you previously thought? Or are your views on that unshaken?

MartinCron• 13 years ago

Or, "if you stop watching Raiders of the Lost Ark halfway through, the Nazis win"

smsm427• 13 years ago

>> voicing support for communism could get you dragged in front of a tribunal

I bet voicing support to a state-sponsored terrorist organisation with officially declared goal of violently overthrowing US government could get you into some trouble anytime. Especially if you work for government and have access to sensitive data.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

People tend to view things through the lens of their own life-time. So for someone who looked at the USA prior to 9/11 to look at it today and to conclude that a lot of damage has been done would be accurate.

What it looks like a hundred years from now is something nobody can make a reasonable stab at. Chances are that by then this has healed and gotten better, chances are that it will get much worse.

"This too shall pass" applies forever, and countries have been born and have disintegrated long before they managed to achieve their goals.

smokeyj• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag#As_pretexts_for_war

JDSD• 13 years ago

More specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

damoncali• 13 years ago

Don't be so sure. This isn't over yet. Back in the day, the feds roamed about with orders to kill. Vigilance is the key. People freak out. Then we reign them back in.

dylangs10302• 13 years ago

You're minimizing the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I don't want arbitrary or harmful laws enforced in the name of counter-terrorism anymore than you do, but don't act as though 3000 lives lost in a direct attack on our soil are insignificant by any measure.

For all it's doing wrong, the NSA has a goal in mind to try to protect the American people. If its methods become cancerous that is one thing, but factor in the intentions here. They are not trying to ruin lives, even though their perspectives might be warped.

sillysaurus4• 13 years ago

This idea is mistaken because nobody knows what their intents are. Your idea of "just trust them" isn't comforting; quite the opposite.

unono• 13 years ago

Hedge funds in cahoots with the NSA could for example predict currency/stock prices with all the extra information. Powerful businessmen/politicians could use it to blackmail others into getting their way using the private info. You can sorta trust the good intentioned nerds over at google to not abuse the private info - but faceless people over NSA is a different matter.

enraged_camel4• 13 years ago

>I don't want arbitrary or harmful laws enforced in the name of counter-terrorism anymore than you do, but don't act as though 3000 lives lost in a direct attack on our soil are insignificant by any measure.

Frankly, I would argue that the 3,000 lives lost in the attacks pale in comparison to the total number of casualties that occurred during the Iraq War. You can look at the numbers yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

greenlander• 13 years ago

Yes, this times one thousand. The terrorists won this round.

clicks• 13 years ago

Lately, I've come to realize that the September 11 attacks actually destroyed America.

I'm not so sure about that. As I learned in another thread, for example, that NSA had been requesting phone records of __BEFORE__ Sept. 11:

Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, convicted of insider trading in April 2007, alleged in appeal documents that the NSA requested that Qwest participate in its wiretapping program __more than six months before September 11, 2001__. Nacchio recalls the meeting as occurring on February 27, 2001. Nacchio further claims that the NSA cancelled a lucrative contract with Qwest as a result of Qwest's refusal to participate in the wiretapping program

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_for_NSA_spying for more.

newnewnew3• 13 years ago

Since Lincoln, we've been heading towards a more powerful, authoritarian, and centralized government. (many people would point to FDR, but an FDR is inevitable once you have a Lincoln).

Since limited government lasted in America for less than 100 years, I assume it was an unstable state. I don't mourn its passing, it was inevitable. Instead I think of how to make better places to live, and technology to fight the authoritarians.

einhverfr16• 13 years ago

But is unlimited government fundamentally authoritarian?

smky80• 13 years ago

All of this is beyond Osama bin Laden's wildest dreams

Just putting this all in a bit of perspective:

This is some character that, after those two buildings were hit by planes and three buildings collapsed into dust, we were shown a picture of and told he did it. He released a few Tupac-style mixtapes, we fought a few wars to go get this guy and his friends, and then we were told ten years later we finally got him and his body was dumped somewhere in the ocean. But we're still fighting those wars.

gasull5• 13 years ago

9/11 destroyed the Western World. European countries have followed the US and now they're less free than they used to be.

Is there a single country that is reasonably free and where freedom is increasing instead of decreasing?

joelrunyon• 13 years ago

Estonia.

Seriously [1].

1. http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

Lots more too.

ryguytilidie• 13 years ago

"The Iraq War itself cost the USA $5 trillion, and another ~4,500 lives (American lives, that is. The total number of casualties is well over 100,000)."

Honestly I feel like the most understated danger in all of this is the 95,500 non-American deaths presumably caused by Americans. I imagine that each of those 95,500 or so has a family and many people who are angry and looking for revenge. It's pretty incredible that we have done all of this in the name of "safety" and have simply gone out of our way to recruit hundreds of thousands of people who want to kill Americans. Utterly amazing how modern human logic works.

zanny2• 13 years ago

Utterly amazing how modern human logic works.

It isn't logical, its emotional. There is no logic in imperialism given historical evidence against it.

adventured• 13 years ago

9/11 was just convenient. It could have been anything large enough. The politicians in power were and are rotten to the core, all they needed was an opening. To quote the political axiom: never waste a good crisis (or tragedy). They rarely do.

arcadeparade• 13 years ago

Over 1 million people were killed in Iraq, with 1 in 4 dead, injured or a refugee.

iterationx• 13 years ago

How did OBL get NORAD to stand down? You haven't realized anything.

sneak• 13 years ago

I used to think this. I don't entirely disagree. But:

“The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful, and others abhorrent and felonious. Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: It is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. It would surprise no impartial observer if the motto “In God we trust” were one day expunged from the coins of the republic by the Junkers at Washington, and the far more appropriate word, “verboten,” substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas-relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet. Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.”

That was written by H. L. Mencken in 1920.

I think about things like the Japanese internment camps the US set up during WW2, and I imagine that it must've always been pretty fucking bad.

Destroyed though it is. I left everything behind to move somewhere better. It's tough, but it's worth it.

gasull5• 13 years ago

I've posted this a few times, but I'll do it again:

Why aren't we all using Bitmessage already?

https://bitmessage.org

https://www.youtube.com/embed/t_dTotavJZ8

graue• 13 years ago

Why aren't we already? It's new, unproven and most of us haven't even heard of it yet. A quick glance at the website suggests you have to install a native program, which, compared to a web app, adds friction, makes it harder to use and requires trusting the authors with full access to your computer. There isn't a mobile app. OS X support is "only lightly tested".

And, even if none of that were the case, the most important reason we aren't using it already is because the people we want to talk to aren't using it, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

gasull5• 13 years ago

Bitmessage is open source.

https://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage

gasull5• 13 years ago

I'm more upset about Larry Page trying to deceive the public than about Obama. I trusted Google. I feel betrayed.

gasull5• 13 years ago

This is the important bit:

Google, Microsoft and Twitter publish transparency reports detailing government requests for information, but these reports do not include FISA requests because they are not allowed to acknowledge them.

Yet since tech companies’ cooperation with the government was revealed Thursday, tech executives have been performing a familiar dance, expressing outrage at the extent of the government’s power to access personal data and calling for more transparency, while at the same time heaping praise upon the president as he visited Silicon Valley.

So Larry Page and Zuckerberg are just deceiving the public because they are ignoring FISA requests.

I'm so outraged right now.

JumpCrisscross• 13 years ago

Systematically using private companies to spy on foreigners and further the state's security regime. Hmm, sounds like what the U.S. was recently castigating China and Huawei for.

leoc4• 13 years ago

Meanwhile, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanhall/2013/06/07/washingt...; "Washington Post Updates, Hedges on Initial PRISM Report"

unreal37• 13 years ago

Huh?

"Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line between giving the government wholesale access to its servers to collect user data and giving them specific data in response to individual court orders. Each said it did not provide the government with full, indiscriminate access to its servers."

Tech companies do not allow widespread open access to their data. They respond to legal requests that come from FISA for records on individual users. Huge difference.

leoc4• 13 years ago

They respond to legal requests that come from FISA for records on individual users.

We were reassured about the 'individual users' part by the tech companies yesterday. And yet:

FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said.

What's the truth here?

moskie• 13 years ago

Can someone sum up the actual evidence for the claim that PRISM, or something like it, exists? What do we have besides a PowerPoint presentation?

And what are the sources for the claims in this article?

In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a tech company’s headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed software on the company’s server and remained at the site for several weeks to download data to an agency laptop.
In other instances, the lawyer said, the agency seeks real-time transmission of data, which companies send digitally.

I would like to know the source of this information, and to be presented with evidence that it is true.

andrewfong• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like an overreaction. The specific allegation is that companies have set up "digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers." Why is this a problem? Do we honestly except companies to print out paper copies of digital data just to inconvenience government agents who ultimately have a legal right to that data?

I understand wanting to narrow the scope of the data available, but no one has put forth evidence yet that Facebook is periodically giving the government the equivalent of an SQL dump. Unlike Verizon, they appear to be producing limited information in response to a specific request on foreign nationals.. Streamlining this process doesn't raise the same issues for me as does the Verizon order.

MetaCosm• 13 years ago

Effectively what these companies are trying to do via stronger and stronger denials is prove a negative... which of course is borderline useless. Regardless of the truth, to PROVE they were not involved is impossible.

For those companies called out but not involved (as the Post walks back its language), it has to be an exceptionally frustrating experience.

vijayboyapati• 13 years ago

"SAN FRANCISCO — When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.

Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. "

Twitter is heroic. Shame on Google, Facebook and all the other state-stooges

buo• 13 years ago

I haven't seen mentioned here that Intel is one of the companies mentioned. I find this particularly worrying: if the hardware itself is compromised, it's game over.

Tech companies, bristling, concede to government surveillance program

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