7 ms·

It's exactly the kind of denial you'd expect them to issue if they were legally required to deny any involvement.

cheald 13y ago
I agree, but what could Page say to convince us otherwise? Either the government is coercing them, and they have to issue lies as denials, or they are participating voluntarily and are voluntarily lying, or they are not participating. The second option seems unlikely to me.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Well, you can't prove a negative so I'm not sure there's anything Page can say. But at the same time they can't all be right. NSA says it's getting data in some form from Google, Page says no direct access. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle then... but where?
  - cheald 13y ago
    I'm 100% with you. I don't know what Page could say, and I agree that it's extremely likely that the truth is somewhere in the middle, but damned if any of us have any ability to actually suss out what that is. It's very frustrating. I just think it's important to not be entirely cynical here, and to keep in mind what such a statement might look like if it were being truthful. I don't know how much different it might be, which generally makes the statement only as good as Larry Page's word, and only then if he doesn't have a gun to his head.
  - anon808 13y ago
    The truth comes from the source that wasn't intended to be public.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    I don't know why we'd expect the truth to be in the middle. If the NSA document is genuine, the information the NSA is collecting from Google is part of a Top Secret program as described in the leaked internal document. If that is true, why would we expect that Google officials would be able to make any public confirmation of the Top Secret program? And, given that, why, in that case, would we expect the truth to be "in the middle"? Conversely, if the leaked document is not genuine, then I still don't see any basis for expecting the truth to be in the "middle" between the false document and the Google denial.
    - dwild 13y ago
      Did I miss some information? I only saw two slides. One that show the potential data accessible and one that show when the companies were added. It doesn't say exactly that they had access to everything. As far as we know PRISM can simply be there to centralize the information that the NSA got in legals ways. We do know that the government ask about 100 users account information each day to Google, we can guess that they do the same to every company on that list and they were all added to PRISM at the date you can find on the slides. I mean that slide contains one of the most important information that we currently have to guess the magnitude of PRISM, the budget. They only need 20 millions $ every years. True data mining is much more expensive than that.
  - bilbo0s 13y ago
    I don't know how many of us served as officers in the military, but the requisite action in this situation is pretty clear. If one is interested in day to day security, speaking from a strictly tactical perspective: You assume Google is giving the NSA information and act accordingly. Doubts are like bothersome flies... until they are crushed... you will never be comfortable at your current position.
  - darkarmani 13y ago
    > NSA says it's getting data in some form from Google, Page says no direct access. Page says no direct access and not even legal access at that scale (verizon). He doesn't say they don't have any access -- in fact he says they comply within the bounds of law, but it's not at the Verizon scale.
- sjs382 13y ago
  We obviously stil have a lot to learn about PRISM... But with that said, I have some conflicting instincts & feelings about all of this and the company responses. On one hand, I would think a very-visible CEO of a major corp would keep their name off of a press release, if the press release was a lie that they were compelled to tell by the government. On the other hand, I feel like each company's response and their use of the exact same terminology ("direct access", etc) feels like a wink and a nod.
  - cheald 13y ago
    I completely agree, and I don't know how to reconcile the two. If I was going to go completely conspiracy-nutter, I'd say that Page has been kept out of the loop intentionally for plausible deniability, and the actual incursion happens at a much lower level, where the people involved are coerced into keeping their mouths shut. That way, the bigwigs get to tell what they think is the truth, the NSA gets their data, and nobody is the wiser. Granted, I think that belongs more in the plot of a thriller novel than in this actual world we're living in, but given the revelations of the past couple of days, fiction doesn't seem that implausible.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - sinnerswing 13y ago
    This may not be PRISM, but wtf is this??? "A US government-mandated backdoor allowed China to hack into Gmail" "In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access." http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hackin...
    - gohrt 13y ago
      Schneier is a smart guy, but he provides no evidence, links, or conjecture of what this backdoor may be. Maybe those hackers just used the regular tech support "back door", as in "SELECT * FROM gmail where email = 'target@gmail.com'
- ket 13y ago
  > or they are participating voluntarily and are voluntarily lying, ... seems unlikely to me. Their business is based on user's data. If you do not feel comfortable giving them your data, it might hurt their business. Hence, IMHO, they do have some incentive to deny PRISM, regardless of the facts.
- declan 13y ago
  Or the news organizations summarizing the leaked slides got it wrong.
rasterizer 13y ago
That's not true, in Verizon's case they just said that they are under a gag-order: http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/from-the-desk-of-randy-milch http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/from-the-desk-of-...
ttrreeww 13y ago
There are cases in which you can't even confirm the existence of a gag order. I can not believe it's constitutional... but they do it.
- SilasX 13y ago
  What about the strategy you hear about of getting around this? Where they say "we're not under a gag order" (or whatever) each day until they are, until they go under a gag order, at which point it reveals they are. Now, I'm not so naive to think that if someone tried this, the government and courts would just say "Herp, derp, you sure outfoxed us there!" But has that strategy ever been tested in court?
  - ttrreeww 13y ago
    I'd imaging it'd get you a free one way ticket to Cuba, not charged.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    Rsync.net does this: http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt And they note: This scheme is not infallible. Although signing the declaration makes it impossible for a third party to produce arbitrary declarations, it does not prevent them from using force to coerce rsync.net to produce false declarations. The news clip in the signed message serves to demonstrate that that update could not have been created prior to that date. It shows that a series of these updates were not created in advance and posted on this page.
colin_jack 13y ago
One thing we know for sure is the truth of what they have been doing will leak out.
davidmr 13y ago
I've never heard it said that anyone was required to deny involvement. Did you mean that exactly as you wrote? I think there's a world of difference between a gag order where you are not allowed to confirm, and an order to explicitly deny involvement. I'm not saying the former is "good", but there's a difference.
- bigiain 13y ago
  OK, I'll say it. I think there's a non-zero probability that there are US government agencies who can and have compelled people to explicitly deny something that they know is true. Realistically, it would boggle my mind to discover they'd done that to all the founders/CEOs/legal departments of all the companies involved here (at least Google/Facebook/Apple/Yahoo/AOL), but given the stakes in this game - I have no doubt that it _could_ be done.
danso 13y ago
No, it's not. Gag orders can also be satisfied by saying "no comment" or just not saying anything at all, which is differently then actively denying something.
Dove 13y ago
That's moving the goalposts, though. The initial assertion -- that this is a cleverly-worded non-denial -- doesn't hold up with the text. Page is clearly and unambiguously denying that Google supplies any information to the government on a millions-of-users scale. Saying that denial is a lie . . . is a completely different charge.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- white_devil 13y ago
  > Page is clearly and unambiguously denying that Google supplies any information to the government on a millions-of-users scale. Kind of like Mariano Rajoy insisted that Spain didn't need a bailout?
  - adventured 13y ago
    And the Federal Reserve said there was no real estate bubble to worry about. And the banks were well capitalized.
    - magicalist 13y ago
      Yes, and murderers always insist that they're innocent. QED. We've got them now!
- hotpockets 13y ago
  Google could be searching email for certain series of characters, like "xxxx obama" and handing that over. Perhaps NSA supplies google a list of phrases to look for.
Dove 13y ago
I don't think so. Those usually sound like, "We cannot confirm or deny the existence of such a program," or "It is not our policy to comment on national security topics" or "No comment." or even "We'll wait for the results of the investigation." I don't think the government generally asks civilians to lie so enthusiastically, because . . . well, as a rule, they just aren't good at it. No, I think it's most likely that Page doesn't know of any such program. Now, it's always possible that such a thing is being carried out on the scale everyone fears by a rogue, loyal-to-the-NSA employee, or a group of them. Or it's possible the original Powerpoint slide including Google as an information source is oversimplified or even inaccurate. Such things do happen when presenting overviews of program capabilities. And many other things in between are possible. It's concerning, but . . . I'll wait for the results of the investigation. ;)
- mullingitover 13y ago
  It's also possible that Larry is concerned about his share price, and what would happen to it if Google was revealed to be completely in bed with the NSA (My guess is it would fall quite a bit). He has real money at stake in limiting the damage that comes from this revelation.
  - Avenger42 13y ago
    The fallout in such a case has to be smaller than it would be if it comes out later that, not only were they in bed with the NSA, they (and the other companies in this situation) blatantly lied about it with their statements today.
    - bigiain 13y ago
      I guess keeping an eye out for Larry (et al) cashing out shares over the next few weeks/months might be a good indicator of the likelyhood of exactly that "coming out later".
      - gohrt 13y ago
declan 13y ago
This is a false assumption. AT&T did not deny opening its networks to the NSA during the EFF litigation. It simply declined to comment, and offered suggestions (which I wrote about at the time) about how the law allowed it to comply with such a secret court order. It's the opposite of what Larry Page is doing.
Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Really? You don't see any difference between the denial posted by Google's CEO vs. the way that (say) Verizon responded? Here's Verizon's response: http://www.businessinsider.com/verizons-memo-to-workers-about-nsa-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/verizons-memo-to-workers-abou...
- ynniv 13y ago
  A better carefully worded response is still a carefully worded response. Google is in a difficult place because we all expected this to be happening, there are now documents suggesting that it has been happening, and no one takes at face value anything that sounds like a lawyer wrote it. EDIT: I mean: (a) No one cares if they have heard about a program called "PRISM" when the point of that program is to aggregate data from other programs. (b) Anyone who is actually innocent in this needs to stop mentioning "direct access to servers": no one expects this program to be directly accessing servers. (c) We also don't care whether actions were "in accordance with the law", as the constitutionality of the surrounding laws is part of the debate. I will say that "Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false." is a good statement to make. It sounds broad in a good way and doesn't appear to have many weasel words, other than specifying "Internet activity" and not email or general activity. Are Google searches even "Internet activity", or is he referring to Google Analytics / Google +1 / 8.8.8.8 DNS?
  - solnyshok 13y ago
    "direct access to servers" looks suspicios to me as well. However, maybe several dozen lawyers had no clue how to react today, and they just copied one another's text?
    - Matt_Cutts 13y ago
      More likely: the first paragraph from the Guardian and the Washington Post both emphasized "direct" access. See the picture here: http://cl.ly/image/2S3i1g2W2R2k http://cl.ly/image/2S3i1g2W2R2k If you're refuting claims of behavior X, it's natural to say "We don't do behavior X."
sullivandanny 13y ago
No, it's not. What little we've had about super-secret legal requests isn't that companies have to lie about them. It's that they can't acknowledge them at all. So the answer they give when asked, and they do get asked, is "no comment." If they were voluntarily part of PRISM, and legally required to keep that quiet, I'd expect them to say "no comment." Doing the opposite make so little sense. It means they're having to flat-out lie to their users, something very hard to recover from.
- RWeaver 13y ago
  The thing is "no comment" would basically confirm that 'something' is happening that's secret. Everyone would go conspiracy wild and pull everything they have away from Google. They probably want to confirm it, but in a completely open and transparent way that assures people there's nothing they should fear here, which they can't do because it's all cloaked in secrecy.

I agree, but what could Page say to convince us otherwise? Either the government is coercing them, and they have to issue lies as denials, or they are participating voluntarily and are voluntarily lying, or they are not participating. The second option seems unlikely to me.

mpyne 13y ago
Well, you can't prove a negative so I'm not sure there's anything Page can say. But at the same time they can't all be right. NSA says it's getting data in some form from Google, Page says no direct access. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle then... but where?
- cheald 13y ago
  I'm 100% with you. I don't know what Page could say, and I agree that it's extremely likely that the truth is somewhere in the middle, but damned if any of us have any ability to actually suss out what that is. It's very frustrating. I just think it's important to not be entirely cynical here, and to keep in mind what such a statement might look like if it were being truthful. I don't know how much different it might be, which generally makes the statement only as good as Larry Page's word, and only then if he doesn't have a gun to his head.
- anon808 13y ago
  The truth comes from the source that wasn't intended to be public.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  I don't know why we'd expect the truth to be in the middle. If the NSA document is genuine, the information the NSA is collecting from Google is part of a Top Secret program as described in the leaked internal document. If that is true, why would we expect that Google officials would be able to make any public confirmation of the Top Secret program? And, given that, why, in that case, would we expect the truth to be "in the middle"? Conversely, if the leaked document is not genuine, then I still don't see any basis for expecting the truth to be in the "middle" between the false document and the Google denial.
  - dwild 13y ago
    Did I miss some information? I only saw two slides. One that show the potential data accessible and one that show when the companies were added. It doesn't say exactly that they had access to everything. As far as we know PRISM can simply be there to centralize the information that the NSA got in legals ways. We do know that the government ask about 100 users account information each day to Google, we can guess that they do the same to every company on that list and they were all added to PRISM at the date you can find on the slides. I mean that slide contains one of the most important information that we currently have to guess the magnitude of PRISM, the budget. They only need 20 millions $ every years. True data mining is much more expensive than that.
- bilbo0s 13y ago
  I don't know how many of us served as officers in the military, but the requisite action in this situation is pretty clear. If one is interested in day to day security, speaking from a strictly tactical perspective: You assume Google is giving the NSA information and act accordingly. Doubts are like bothersome flies... until they are crushed... you will never be comfortable at your current position.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  > NSA says it's getting data in some form from Google, Page says no direct access. Page says no direct access and not even legal access at that scale (verizon). He doesn't say they don't have any access -- in fact he says they comply within the bounds of law, but it's not at the Verizon scale.
sjs382 13y ago
We obviously stil have a lot to learn about PRISM... But with that said, I have some conflicting instincts & feelings about all of this and the company responses. On one hand, I would think a very-visible CEO of a major corp would keep their name off of a press release, if the press release was a lie that they were compelled to tell by the government. On the other hand, I feel like each company's response and their use of the exact same terminology ("direct access", etc) feels like a wink and a nod.
- cheald 13y ago
  I completely agree, and I don't know how to reconcile the two. If I was going to go completely conspiracy-nutter, I'd say that Page has been kept out of the loop intentionally for plausible deniability, and the actual incursion happens at a much lower level, where the people involved are coerced into keeping their mouths shut. That way, the bigwigs get to tell what they think is the truth, the NSA gets their data, and nobody is the wiser. Granted, I think that belongs more in the plot of a thriller novel than in this actual world we're living in, but given the revelations of the past couple of days, fiction doesn't seem that implausible.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- sinnerswing 13y ago
  This may not be PRISM, but wtf is this??? "A US government-mandated backdoor allowed China to hack into Gmail" "In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access." http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hackin...
  - gohrt 13y ago
    Schneier is a smart guy, but he provides no evidence, links, or conjecture of what this backdoor may be. Maybe those hackers just used the regular tech support "back door", as in "SELECT * FROM gmail where email = 'target@gmail.com'
ket 13y ago
> or they are participating voluntarily and are voluntarily lying, ... seems unlikely to me. Their business is based on user's data. If you do not feel comfortable giving them your data, it might hurt their business. Hence, IMHO, they do have some incentive to deny PRISM, regardless of the facts.
declan 13y ago
Or the news organizations summarizing the leaked slides got it wrong.

rasterizer 13y ago

That's not true, in Verizon's case they just said that they are under a gag-order: http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/from-the-desk-of-randy-milch http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/from-the-desk-of-...

ttrreeww 13y ago

There are cases in which you can't even confirm the existence of a gag order. I can not believe it's constitutional... but they do it.

SilasX 13y ago
What about the strategy you hear about of getting around this? Where they say "we're not under a gag order" (or whatever) each day until they are, until they go under a gag order, at which point it reveals they are. Now, I'm not so naive to think that if someone tried this, the government and courts would just say "Herp, derp, you sure outfoxed us there!" But has that strategy ever been tested in court?
- ttrreeww 13y ago
  I'd imaging it'd get you a free one way ticket to Cuba, not charged.
- bigiain 13y ago
  Rsync.net does this: http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt And they note: This scheme is not infallible. Although signing the declaration makes it impossible for a third party to produce arbitrary declarations, it does not prevent them from using force to coerce rsync.net to produce false declarations. The news clip in the signed message serves to demonstrate that that update could not have been created prior to that date. It shows that a series of these updates were not created in advance and posted on this page.

colin_jack 13y ago

One thing we know for sure is the truth of what they have been doing will leak out.

davidmr 13y ago

I've never heard it said that anyone was required to deny involvement. Did you mean that exactly as you wrote? I think there's a world of difference between a gag order where you are not allowed to confirm, and an order to explicitly deny involvement. I'm not saying the former is "good", but there's a difference.

bigiain 13y ago
OK, I'll say it. I think there's a non-zero probability that there are US government agencies who can and have compelled people to explicitly deny something that they know is true. Realistically, it would boggle my mind to discover they'd done that to all the founders/CEOs/legal departments of all the companies involved here (at least Google/Facebook/Apple/Yahoo/AOL), but given the stakes in this game - I have no doubt that it _could_ be done.

danso 13y ago

No, it's not. Gag orders can also be satisfied by saying "no comment" or just not saying anything at all, which is differently then actively denying something.

Dove 13y ago

That's moving the goalposts, though. The initial assertion -- that this is a cleverly-worded non-denial -- doesn't hold up with the text. Page is clearly and unambiguously denying that Google supplies any information to the government on a millions-of-users scale. Saying that denial is a lie . . . is a completely different charge.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
white_devil 13y ago
> Page is clearly and unambiguously denying that Google supplies any information to the government on a millions-of-users scale. Kind of like Mariano Rajoy insisted that Spain didn't need a bailout?
- adventured 13y ago
  And the Federal Reserve said there was no real estate bubble to worry about. And the banks were well capitalized.
  - magicalist 13y ago
    Yes, and murderers always insist that they're innocent. QED. We've got them now!
hotpockets 13y ago
Google could be searching email for certain series of characters, like "xxxx obama" and handing that over. Perhaps NSA supplies google a list of phrases to look for.

Dove 13y ago

I don't think so. Those usually sound like, "We cannot confirm or deny the existence of such a program," or "It is not our policy to comment on national security topics" or "No comment." or even "We'll wait for the results of the investigation." I don't think the government generally asks civilians to lie so enthusiastically, because . . . well, as a rule, they just aren't good at it. No, I think it's most likely that Page doesn't know of any such program. Now, it's always possible that such a thing is being carried out on the scale everyone fears by a rogue, loyal-to-the-NSA employee, or a group of them. Or it's possible the original Powerpoint slide including Google as an information source is oversimplified or even inaccurate. Such things do happen when presenting overviews of program capabilities. And many other things in between are possible. It's concerning, but . . . I'll wait for the results of the investigation. ;)

mullingitover 13y ago
It's also possible that Larry is concerned about his share price, and what would happen to it if Google was revealed to be completely in bed with the NSA (My guess is it would fall quite a bit). He has real money at stake in limiting the damage that comes from this revelation.
- Avenger42 13y ago
  The fallout in such a case has to be smaller than it would be if it comes out later that, not only were they in bed with the NSA, they (and the other companies in this situation) blatantly lied about it with their statements today.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    I guess keeping an eye out for Larry (et al) cashing out shares over the next few weeks/months might be a good indicator of the likelyhood of exactly that "coming out later".
    - gohrt 13y ago

declan 13y ago

This is a false assumption. AT&T did not deny opening its networks to the NSA during the EFF litigation. It simply declined to comment, and offered suggestions (which I wrote about at the time) about how the law allowed it to comply with such a secret court order. It's the opposite of what Larry Page is doing.

Matt_Cutts 13y ago

Really? You don't see any difference between the denial posted by Google's CEO vs. the way that (say) Verizon responded? Here's Verizon's response: http://www.businessinsider.com/verizons-memo-to-workers-about-nsa-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/verizons-memo-to-workers-abou...

ynniv 13y ago
A better carefully worded response is still a carefully worded response. Google is in a difficult place because we all expected this to be happening, there are now documents suggesting that it has been happening, and no one takes at face value anything that sounds like a lawyer wrote it. EDIT: I mean: (a) No one cares if they have heard about a program called "PRISM" when the point of that program is to aggregate data from other programs. (b) Anyone who is actually innocent in this needs to stop mentioning "direct access to servers": no one expects this program to be directly accessing servers. (c) We also don't care whether actions were "in accordance with the law", as the constitutionality of the surrounding laws is part of the debate. I will say that "Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false." is a good statement to make. It sounds broad in a good way and doesn't appear to have many weasel words, other than specifying "Internet activity" and not email or general activity. Are Google searches even "Internet activity", or is he referring to Google Analytics / Google +1 / 8.8.8.8 DNS?
- solnyshok 13y ago
  "direct access to servers" looks suspicios to me as well. However, maybe several dozen lawyers had no clue how to react today, and they just copied one another's text?
  - Matt_Cutts 13y ago
    More likely: the first paragraph from the Guardian and the Washington Post both emphasized "direct" access. See the picture here: http://cl.ly/image/2S3i1g2W2R2k http://cl.ly/image/2S3i1g2W2R2k If you're refuting claims of behavior X, it's natural to say "We don't do behavior X."

sullivandanny 13y ago

No, it's not. What little we've had about super-secret legal requests isn't that companies have to lie about them. It's that they can't acknowledge them at all. So the answer they give when asked, and they do get asked, is "no comment." If they were voluntarily part of PRISM, and legally required to keep that quiet, I'd expect them to say "no comment." Doing the opposite make so little sense. It means they're having to flat-out lie to their users, something very hard to recover from.

RWeaver 13y ago
The thing is "no comment" would basically confirm that 'something' is happening that's secret. Everyone would go conspiracy wild and pull everything they have away from Google. They probably want to confirm it, but in a completely open and transparent way that assures people there's nothing they should fear here, which they can't do because it's all cloaked in secrecy.