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Larry Page: "the U.S. government does not have direct access" Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access" Facebook: "We do not provide

by andyl 13y ago

Larry Page: "the U.S. government does not have direct access" Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access" Facebook: "We do not provide any government organization with direct access" Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access" Remarkably consistent - as if it was coordinated, or scripted by an attorney...

gridscomputing 13y ago
It's not "direct" access, it's access through a one-way live xml feed
- varjag 13y ago
  It's for the government, gotta be CSV in EBCDIC.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Please ... it will be binary format. Even the government isn't so wasteful to transmit data as xml. And if it did you could easily find where the servers were located by the 5 nuclear power plants needed to power such parsing.
  - gridscomputing 13y ago
    HUR DUR XML IS BAD HUR DUR
  - Achshar 13y ago
    No, JSON.
  - bifrost 13y ago
    I hate to tell you this, but the government has never been concerned enough with overhead to not use something like XML. Frankly its probably tab deliminated ASCII. We'd be lucky to see a binary protocol.
lurker14 13y ago
It's no secret that companies (and libraries, etc) must provide indirect access: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US&#x2F https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/U...; What exactly do you think is happening, that Google is hiding? Where are the datacenters big enough to hold a whole extra copy of every piece of data google maintains? (plus every other company)
boi_v2 13y ago
+1 "direct access" is just a deceiving jargon that is being used by a bunch of corporate lawyers working in sync.
deelowe 13y ago
Or as if they are addressing the media talking points from yesterday... It was all over the news. Every channel was saying "direct access" and then throwing names like "Google," "Apple," and "Iphone" around.
earth2marsh 13y ago
Letting out my inner conspiracy theorist for a moment, a prism can be used to split light. For example, think of a pentaprism mirror in many DSLR cameras. Did the NSA choose "PRISM" because they are splitting the signal upstream of providers, thus giving private companies plausible deniability?

by andyl 13y ago

gridscomputing 13y ago

It's not "direct" access, it's access through a one-way live xml feed

varjag 13y ago
It's for the government, gotta be CSV in EBCDIC.
venomsnake 13y ago
Please ... it will be binary format. Even the government isn't so wasteful to transmit data as xml. And if it did you could easily find where the servers were located by the 5 nuclear power plants needed to power such parsing.
- gridscomputing 13y ago
  HUR DUR XML IS BAD HUR DUR
- Achshar 13y ago
  No, JSON.
- bifrost 13y ago
  I hate to tell you this, but the government has never been concerned enough with overhead to not use something like XML. Frankly its probably tab deliminated ASCII. We'd be lucky to see a binary protocol.

lurker14 13y ago

It's no secret that companies (and libraries, etc) must provide indirect access: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US&#x2F https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/U...; What exactly do you think is happening, that Google is hiding? Where are the datacenters big enough to hold a whole extra copy of every piece of data google maintains? (plus every other company)

boi_v2 13y ago

+1 "direct access" is just a deceiving jargon that is being used by a bunch of corporate lawyers working in sync.

deelowe 13y ago

Or as if they are addressing the media talking points from yesterday... It was all over the news. Every channel was saying "direct access" and then throwing names like "Google," "Apple," and "Iphone" around.

earth2marsh 13y ago

Letting out my inner conspiracy theorist for a moment, a prism can be used to split light. For example, think of a pentaprism mirror in many DSLR cameras. Did the NSA choose "PRISM" because they are splitting the signal upstream of providers, thus giving private companies plausible deniability?