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Has this been substantiated? To my knowledge Amazon denies being a part of PRISM and the only thing a quick search reveals is that denial and Snowden criticizi

by tdmule 10y ago

Has this been substantiated? To my knowledge Amazon denies being a part of PRISM and the only thing a quick search reveals is that denial and Snowden criticizing Amazon for not being HTTPS by default on some of their endpoints.

benevol 10y ago
Have you read Snowden's Leaks? All of the major tech companies have been on board for a long time (and that was years ago). How can you believe that a giant like Amazon will somehow magically not be part of it? It's time for the country to sharpen its critical thinking skills.
- jamesrcole 10y ago
  > All of the major tech companies have been on board and > How can you believe that [...] Amazon [isn't] part of it? I don't know what they say, but what you're saying here is unclear. Do the leaks mention Amazon or not?
  - tdmule 10y ago
    The closest I can see to someone asserting they do is https://www.mhpbooks.com/is-amazon-one-of-the-companies-working-with-the-nsa-to-spy-on-you/ https://www.mhpbooks.com/is-amazon-one-of-the-companies-work... But the thrust of that article is more suspicion that Amazon is not mentioned in the leaks and questioning the reliability of the company's word. It does cite one source, described in the article as non-mainstream, which asserts that Amazon was a part of PRISM, but that source fails to cite any leak. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40822.html http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40822.html Edit: I should mention that the first article casting doubt on Amazon's reliability is published by an independent publishing company, historically an industry that has been at odds with Amazon and harmed by its business practices.
- nl 10y ago
  All of the major tech companies have been on board for a long time (and that was years ago). I have read the Snowden leaks. This is one of those times when details matter, and in those details you are wrong. I wrote this previously[1] about Apple, but it applies here too: The problem is that PRISM has conflated two separate things, and it is unclear how much of that conflation occurred at the NSA and how much outside. Apple was (and is) compliant in the "release customer details with a court order" thing, which it seems is part of the PRISM data. However, there was a second part, where the NSA got bulk access to communications without a court order. It is unclear which companies were complicit in this part. We know Google wasn't (because the NSA slide decks show how they had to intercept Google's inter and intra-data center links which were unencrypted at the time - and Google undertook a crash program to fix that). Apple's statements are pretty clear: they say they only release information with a court order. That means they weren't complicit in bulk collection - but they may have been hacked at the time like Google was. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13517740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13517740
  - Pyxl101 10y ago
    Yes, this is a crucial distinction and matches my understanding from what I've read of these public documents: PRISM is a program in which the NSA intercepted Internet and other communications, and then reconstructed the meaning of those communications at a higher level -- that is, interpreting HTTP requests to Google as searches, email views, and whatever else. I did not see any evidence in the leaked documentation nor the reporting on those primary sources that the companies involved were complicit. If this evidence exists I would be very interested to know, but from Google's actions subsequent to the leaks it did not seem they agreed with the program or were complying with it, and instead took actions to oppose the program by encrypting their communications links internally, and indirectly by advocating encryption in public Internet protocols such as HTTP and SMTP.
  - nym 10y ago
    I was under the impression that Google gave bulk access to the NSA, and the NSA wiretapped them regardless. I don't have a source to substantiate that claim though.

by tdmule 10y ago

benevol 10y ago

Have you read Snowden's Leaks? All of the major tech companies have been on board for a long time (and that was years ago). How can you believe that a giant like Amazon will somehow magically not be part of it? It's time for the country to sharpen its critical thinking skills.

jamesrcole 10y ago
> All of the major tech companies have been on board and > How can you believe that [...] Amazon [isn't] part of it? I don't know what they say, but what you're saying here is unclear. Do the leaks mention Amazon or not?
- tdmule 10y ago
  The closest I can see to someone asserting they do is https://www.mhpbooks.com/is-amazon-one-of-the-companies-working-with-the-nsa-to-spy-on-you/ https://www.mhpbooks.com/is-amazon-one-of-the-companies-work... But the thrust of that article is more suspicion that Amazon is not mentioned in the leaks and questioning the reliability of the company's word. It does cite one source, described in the article as non-mainstream, which asserts that Amazon was a part of PRISM, but that source fails to cite any leak. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40822.html http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40822.html Edit: I should mention that the first article casting doubt on Amazon's reliability is published by an independent publishing company, historically an industry that has been at odds with Amazon and harmed by its business practices.
nl 10y ago
All of the major tech companies have been on board for a long time (and that was years ago). I have read the Snowden leaks. This is one of those times when details matter, and in those details you are wrong. I wrote this previously[1] about Apple, but it applies here too: The problem is that PRISM has conflated two separate things, and it is unclear how much of that conflation occurred at the NSA and how much outside. Apple was (and is) compliant in the "release customer details with a court order" thing, which it seems is part of the PRISM data. However, there was a second part, where the NSA got bulk access to communications without a court order. It is unclear which companies were complicit in this part. We know Google wasn't (because the NSA slide decks show how they had to intercept Google's inter and intra-data center links which were unencrypted at the time - and Google undertook a crash program to fix that). Apple's statements are pretty clear: they say they only release information with a court order. That means they weren't complicit in bulk collection - but they may have been hacked at the time like Google was. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13517740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13517740
- Pyxl101 10y ago
  Yes, this is a crucial distinction and matches my understanding from what I've read of these public documents: PRISM is a program in which the NSA intercepted Internet and other communications, and then reconstructed the meaning of those communications at a higher level -- that is, interpreting HTTP requests to Google as searches, email views, and whatever else. I did not see any evidence in the leaked documentation nor the reporting on those primary sources that the companies involved were complicit. If this evidence exists I would be very interested to know, but from Google's actions subsequent to the leaks it did not seem they agreed with the program or were complying with it, and instead took actions to oppose the program by encrypting their communications links internally, and indirectly by advocating encryption in public Internet protocols such as HTTP and SMTP.
- nym 10y ago
  I was under the impression that Google gave bulk access to the NSA, and the NSA wiretapped them regardless. I don't have a source to substantiate that claim though.