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At this point, it pretty much is a conspiracy theory. The only evidence we have of these companies' involvement is the leaked slides, which could have been the

by necubi 13y ago

At this point, it pretty much is a conspiracy theory. The only evidence we have of these companies' involvement is the leaked slides, which could have been the result of over-promising from a contractor or a misunderstanding from a non-technical manager. We have a lot of evidence to the contrary, particular that nearly every company allegedly involved has issued strong denials, which, again, they cannot be compelled to do by NSLs. We can't conflate everything the government or the NSA does. This program seems unlikely for a number of reasons, including the conspiracy aspect (quite a lot of engineers working for Google, Apple, etc. would have to be in on it) and the technical challenges involved. Do you have any idea how much data Google produces? How complicated their infrastructure is?

revelation 13y ago
I'm the first to believe that the one thing saving us from the surveillance state is the unlimited technical incompetence of our watchmen. To that tune, when I hear about stuff like ThinThread or other surveillance fantasies, I think of upper management losers dreaming up Java Enterprise systems that only ever achieve to convert gigantic amounts of energy into waste heat. That still doesn't mean we can accept the government lieing to us or hiding basic information, just because we believe they are harmless kids way over their head.
adventured 13y ago
No, it's not a conspiracy theory. 1) James Clapper admitted Prism is real 2) Of course such a program would involve the top Internet companies, who in the world else would it involve (the smallest Internet companies?)
visarga 13y ago
> Do you have any idea how much data Google produces? How complicated their infrastructure is? For a continuous activity stream, a single fiber would do. How many queries and mails do you think google processes per second? I found somewhere that they have 4 billion queries per day. I put 100 bytes per query, that translates to a measly 5MB/s. For emails I estimated 10% of 300 billion (some figures I found somewhere), with 10KB/email that translates to 3GB/s. A single fiber optic cable contains many fibers each carrying at least 1TB/s. It's easily doable in a stealth way. They don't need to use more than 1% of a single fibre.

by necubi 13y ago

revelation 13y ago

I'm the first to believe that the one thing saving us from the surveillance state is the unlimited technical incompetence of our watchmen. To that tune, when I hear about stuff like ThinThread or other surveillance fantasies, I think of upper management losers dreaming up Java Enterprise systems that only ever achieve to convert gigantic amounts of energy into waste heat. That still doesn't mean we can accept the government lieing to us or hiding basic information, just because we believe they are harmless kids way over their head.

adventured 13y ago

No, it's not a conspiracy theory. 1) James Clapper admitted Prism is real 2) Of course such a program would involve the top Internet companies, who in the world else would it involve (the smallest Internet companies?)

visarga 13y ago

> Do you have any idea how much data Google produces? How complicated their infrastructure is? For a continuous activity stream, a single fiber would do. How many queries and mails do you think google processes per second? I found somewhere that they have 4 billion queries per day. I put 100 bytes per query, that translates to a measly 5MB/s. For emails I estimated 10% of 300 billion (some figures I found somewhere), with 10KB/email that translates to 3GB/s. A single fiber optic cable contains many fibers each carrying at least 1TB/s. It's easily doable in a stealth way. They don't need to use more than 1% of a single fibre.