They deny providing an API (at least Google denies it):
I’m not sure I can say this more clearly: we’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there’s is no government program that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported. Note that I say "originally" because you'll see that many of those original sources corrected their articles after it became clear that the PRISM slides were not accurate. Now, what does happen is that we get specific requests from the government for user data. We review each of those requests and push back when the request is overly broad or doesn't follow the correct process. There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box.
Twitter's ads look like Tweets, Facebook's ads look like Facebook posts, oh and search ads look like search results. At Least in Gmail they have their own designated tab.
So the upgrade took a few hours to complete and it didn't happen instantly in defiance to the laws of physics. Next time play it safe and upgrade during the weekend.
The post is dated May 27, is Google planning to announce a new feature for Apps this week and this is some sort of a preemptive PR attack?
You want me to speculate about arrow direction?! alright, generally speaking the access is not "direct" because the "boxes" act as buffers. I can't say if they "pull" the boxes or they just serve subpoenas to them and get the data pushed back.
Obviously there is plenty of room for speculation but what seems to emerge, at least as I see it, is that even the worst case scenario doesn't entail actual "direct access".
In the case of activity timestamps (which I'm sure legally don't get the same protection as content) they would be sent by the companies to the FBI/NSA not have their actual servers monitored by them.
Interesting. Some insight, some contradiction and confusion especially when compared to earlier reportings on the first slides:
- The "direct access" claim is replaced with "FBI interception unit" which is "government equipment on private company property to retrieve matching information from a participating company" that detail isn't mentioned in slides but provided in annotations.
- The case format notation points to "real-time notification" when a target logs in or sends emails/IM/VOIP etc:
"Depending on the provider, the NSA may receive live notifications when a target logs on or sends an e-mail, or may monitor a voice, text or voice chat as it happens (noted on the first slide as "Surveillance").
The "Depending on the provider" bit is interesting as it suggests that there are potentially different levels of "participation".
- "On April 5, according to this slide, there were 117,675 active surveillance targets in PRISM's counterterrorism database." can a FISA order cover a target across service providers or each provider requires its own order? the number of targets could dramatically be revises downwards depending on that.
- Statistical analysis of Google closures shows that they deprecate products at below industry pace, so your impression about that is also wrong: http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns
According to Google "NSA powers" in their case are restricted to FISA orders, so I'm not sure how a random worker at a government contractor can produce these. Snowden was a sysadmin for a contractor and that is how he got his hands on their internal documents.
Is no one else paying attention to anything beyond the "slides" in this story?!
That's stupid. Particularly how you list 'plentiful storage' as a drawback, if that's the case then it's plainly an issue of law as it pits privacy against usability.
They would want to publish the scope of the FISA requests.
The other companies aren't going this far and I think they deserve a credit for what they're doing.
And I disagree with commend you link to, the solution isn't limiting data collection, sure it makes you a target but more data equals a better product. It's an issue of government overreach not engineering decisions.
Again with the 'carefully worded denials' - the denials were similar because they were accused of the same thing, which is allowing "direct access".
The most worrisome and misunderstood part of these reports is the "direct access" bit: can the government arbitrarily query company servers? their denials address that, they clearly say that is not the case, instead they sftp the data after being served with court orders or warrants and yes also the secretive FISA requests.
So by revealing the number of FISA requests they receive and their scope they hope to clear this "direct access" mess. As even FISA orders are much more acceptable than wholesale access.
As for the development being reported here: I think it has merit seeing how this clearly falls under the first amendment, but I'd like a lawyer to chip in.
You are overreacting, not to mention reaching the wrong conclusions from these NSA reports. The problem isn't measurement, that is a cornerstone of engineering (and of everything else really), the problem is government overreach.
I’m not sure I can say this more clearly: we’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there’s is no government program that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported. Note that I say "originally" because you'll see that many of those original sources corrected their articles after it became clear that the PRISM slides were not accurate. Now, what does happen is that we get specific requests from the government for user data. We review each of those requests and push back when the request is overly broad or doesn't follow the correct process. There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/jun/19/google...