8 ms·

U.S. Government: Reports About PRISM Contain “Numerous Inaccuracies”

158 points by Lightning 13y ago

danielki 13y ago
Okay, NSA, so how about some transparency to clear up these supposed "inaccuracies"? Nobody believes you if you just deny something without providing evidence to back it up.
- sounds 13y ago
  Take it to the courts. The only way the NSA/FBI/Obama administration are actually going to give up any hard evidence is if compelled to. The EFF is certainly attempting to do just that: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-millions-americans https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-m...
fianchetto 13y ago
> It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States. "Intentionally" is a weasel word. Clapper also used the word "wittingly", another weasel word, when questioned by Congress. The takeaway: They still don't deny that they're collecting the info.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  "oops, this just happened to fall into our pockets finders keepers!"
jandrewrogers 13y ago
The idea that PalTalk was a top-tier data collection target up there with Google and Facebook does stretch credibility. I'd never even heard of them before. (Alternate theory: the slides are an awesome marketing hoax by PalTalk.)
drivebyacct2 13y ago
How does this, in their response, not confirm the PRISM info in at least some way? Or am I meant to take this as "any confidential info is potentially dangerous"? And even then, are they admitting this is authentic confidential info? >The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation. >The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties. And that's exactly the transparency we're interested in. Help establish a bit of trust, because right now I trust the least trustworthy person I know more than the NSA. And their last defense is FISA/FISC and they're still pretending that only applies to foreign nationals? Or is "only meant to be used on... foreign nationals"?
einhverfr 13y ago
Reading it carefully, what they are saying is this: The press is complaining that we are spying on Americans. This is very inaccurate. We are mostly trying to spy on foreigners. We have a robust legal framework in place, rubber stamped by the Star Chamber (aka FISC) which protects your liberties. The fact that the media reports did not report on our secret procedures makes the reports grossly inaccurate. Please trust us. kthxbye
icambron 13y ago
> The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation. > The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties. The dissonance between those two sentences, which appear consecutively in the statement, could not be mores striking. "Transparency damages your security! Yet your lack of information makes us seem unreasonable!" So convince us! Don't hide behind a wall of unconvincing secrecy and then tell us it's good for us. We're the People; we're happy to decide how much you can spy on us for the sake of our security. You know what I think? I think you kept this all a secret because your case for doing it utterly sucks, and you knew we'd object. And I think you've earned precisely that level of trust. Edit: minor expansion
- mtgx 13y ago
  I love their circular logic: "The disclosure of our illegal spying threatens our illegal spying in the future". Hey at least they don't use the "we don't tell you we're spying on you so we don't infringe on your privacy" line, anymore. These comments go to the top, along with FBI's last year's quote "Warrants make our job hard" i.e. check and balances make their job harder, which is kind of the point, I think.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Put yourself in the spooks' position. You may know for a fact that parts of the story are simply inaccurate, but you're sworn not to reveal unclassified material without authorization, and you can't know for sure how good the criteria for classification are due to compartmentalization. Only a few people, like the President and the DNI, are in a position to make those determinations, and they're in a somewhat similar double-bind insofar as selective declassification may later turn out to be a mistake. If you talk to a lot of conservatives, you soon find that when the administration increases transparency or answers a FOIA request with meaningful information, there are plenty of hawks ready to criticize the administration for compromising security, putting American lives at risk, and so on.
jakobe 13y ago
What worries me most is that they don't even deny spying on foreigners. With so many international websites and services located in the US, what does that mean for us in Europe? What difference do our European privacy laws make, if we use websites with servers in the US?
- danso 13y ago
  The NSA's primary mission is to look at foreign communications. The controversy that is erupting here is because that mission inevitably involves surveillance of US data centers
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  I've wondered for a while now why a European company would do their hosting in the US. Surely everyone knows by now that the US is one of the worst places (outside of NK or China) to host, why not host somewhere that doesn't have these issues? You're worried about latency? Then just get rid of half your facebook/g+ buttons and call it good.
coldtea 13y ago
>U.S. Government: Reports About PRISM Contain “Numerous Inaccuracies” Yes, that would be the case for any leak of "in the dark" government activity. It's not like everything is out in the open to be reported upon freely and in detail. As long as they got the gist right, I'm covered. >The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation. How is the use of "top secret U.S. court documents" not a threat to the very idea of democracy itself? And a threat to the people from such covert activities?
coldcode 13y ago
Why would any foreign company or government do business with a US company any more. All your secret belong to US.

158 points by Lightning 13y ago

Okay, NSA, so how about some transparency to clear up these supposed "inaccuracies"? Nobody believes you if you just deny something without providing evidence to back it up.

sounds 13y ago
Take it to the courts. The only way the NSA/FBI/Obama administration are actually going to give up any hard evidence is if compelled to. The EFF is certainly attempting to do just that: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-millions-americans https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-m...

fianchetto 13y ago

> It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States. "Intentionally" is a weasel word. Clapper also used the word "wittingly", another weasel word, when questioned by Congress. The takeaway: They still don't deny that they're collecting the info.

wavefunction 13y ago
"oops, this just happened to fall into our pockets finders keepers!"

jandrewrogers 13y ago

The idea that PalTalk was a top-tier data collection target up there with Google and Facebook does stretch credibility. I'd never even heard of them before. (Alternate theory: the slides are an awesome marketing hoax by PalTalk.)

drivebyacct2 13y ago

How does this, in their response, not confirm the PRISM info in at least some way? Or am I meant to take this as "any confidential info is potentially dangerous"? And even then, are they admitting this is authentic confidential info? >The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation. >The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties. And that's exactly the transparency we're interested in. Help establish a bit of trust, because right now I trust the least trustworthy person I know more than the NSA. And their last defense is FISA/FISC and they're still pretending that only applies to foreign nationals? Or is "only meant to be used on... foreign nationals"?

einhverfr 13y ago

Reading it carefully, what they are saying is this: The press is complaining that we are spying on Americans. This is very inaccurate. We are mostly trying to spy on foreigners. We have a robust legal framework in place, rubber stamped by the Star Chamber (aka FISC) which protects your liberties. The fact that the media reports did not report on our secret procedures makes the reports grossly inaccurate. Please trust us. kthxbye

icambron 13y ago

> The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation. > The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties. The dissonance between those two sentences, which appear consecutively in the statement, could not be mores striking. "Transparency damages your security! Yet your lack of information makes us seem unreasonable!" So convince us! Don't hide behind a wall of unconvincing secrecy and then tell us it's good for us. We're the People; we're happy to decide how much you can spy on us for the sake of our security. You know what I think? I think you kept this all a secret because your case for doing it utterly sucks, and you knew we'd object. And I think you've earned precisely that level of trust. Edit: minor expansion

mtgx 13y ago
I love their circular logic: "The disclosure of our illegal spying threatens our illegal spying in the future". Hey at least they don't use the "we don't tell you we're spying on you so we don't infringe on your privacy" line, anymore. These comments go to the top, along with FBI's last year's quote "Warrants make our job hard" i.e. check and balances make their job harder, which is kind of the point, I think.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Put yourself in the spooks' position. You may know for a fact that parts of the story are simply inaccurate, but you're sworn not to reveal unclassified material without authorization, and you can't know for sure how good the criteria for classification are due to compartmentalization. Only a few people, like the President and the DNI, are in a position to make those determinations, and they're in a somewhat similar double-bind insofar as selective declassification may later turn out to be a mistake. If you talk to a lot of conservatives, you soon find that when the administration increases transparency or answers a FOIA request with meaningful information, there are plenty of hawks ready to criticize the administration for compromising security, putting American lives at risk, and so on.

jakobe 13y ago

What worries me most is that they don't even deny spying on foreigners. With so many international websites and services located in the US, what does that mean for us in Europe? What difference do our European privacy laws make, if we use websites with servers in the US?

danso 13y ago
The NSA's primary mission is to look at foreign communications. The controversy that is erupting here is because that mission inevitably involves surveillance of US data centers
flyinRyan 13y ago
I've wondered for a while now why a European company would do their hosting in the US. Surely everyone knows by now that the US is one of the worst places (outside of NK or China) to host, why not host somewhere that doesn't have these issues? You're worried about latency? Then just get rid of half your facebook/g+ buttons and call it good.

coldtea 13y ago

>U.S. Government: Reports About PRISM Contain “Numerous Inaccuracies” Yes, that would be the case for any leak of "in the dark" government activity. It's not like everything is out in the open to be reported upon freely and in detail. As long as they got the gist right, I'm covered. >The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation. How is the use of "top secret U.S. court documents" not a threat to the very idea of democracy itself? And a threat to the people from such covert activities?

coldcode 13y ago

Why would any foreign company or government do business with a US company any more. All your secret belong to US.