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You seem to be suggesting one of two things. Either: 1) The heads of these companies had a conference call this morning and agreed on a 4-paragraph format, wi

You seem to be suggesting one of two things. Either: 1) The heads of these companies had a conference call this morning and agreed on a 4-paragraph format, with specific points for each paragraph. Or 2) The federal government instructed each company to respond today, with a 4-paragraph point-by-point, and then Larry and Mark obediently complied. Ludicrous.

adventured 13y ago
It's not ludicrous at all that the companies were given basic PR instruction when they signed on, in the case of being asked about the program. In fact, that's exactly what would occur. What's ludicruous is thinking the Feds are tapping every major telecom provider, but wouldn't do the same to Facebook / Google / Apple / Microsoft. These companies are collectively vastly more important than AT&T and Verizon, worth about a cool trillion dollars, and now make-up a huge portion of the data infrastructure for American consumers. A spy is given instructions in case of interrogation by the enemy. Why wouldn't a $250 billion corporation be given instruction in case one of the largest spying systems in history hits the public news? It's absurd to think they wouldn't be.
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coldtea 13y ago
"Ludicrous"? Are you kidding me? In any case of accidental exposure of a covert government operation involving many such parties, there would be instructions how to handle the media. Those could be known in advance (at least for some cases), or they would get a call in case of emergency with instructions on what they are allowed to reveal and how to say it. It's not different than what would happen at a multinational if there was some embarrassing incident related to one branch (e.g a costly in human lives accident). The legal/marketing team would reach to each branch pronto, with instructions what to say to the media. So, if the media get the manager of the, say, Canadian, branch, he would say more or less what the manager of the German branch would tell to his media. The only "ludicrous" thing is your misplaced scepticism -- as if things thing isn't both obvious and something that's standard practice to media handling from entities of any scale...
rcthompson 13y ago
More likely would be that the NSA (or whoever) gave all the involved companies the same standard talking points, either in the past few hours/days or years ago when each company "joined" the program, and each company loosely paraphrased those same talking points. Having all the companies issue the same denial at the same time was probably not anticipated, so they didn't coordinate with each other to avoid sounding like they're all parroting the same talking points. I think that explanation strikes an appropriate balance of competence and incompetence.
jfoster 13y ago
Or some copied the others.

adventured 13y ago

It's not ludicrous at all that the companies were given basic PR instruction when they signed on, in the case of being asked about the program. In fact, that's exactly what would occur. What's ludicruous is thinking the Feds are tapping every major telecom provider, but wouldn't do the same to Facebook / Google / Apple / Microsoft. These companies are collectively vastly more important than AT&T and Verizon, worth about a cool trillion dollars, and now make-up a huge portion of the data infrastructure for American consumers. A spy is given instructions in case of interrogation by the enemy. Why wouldn't a $250 billion corporation be given instruction in case one of the largest spying systems in history hits the public news? It's absurd to think they wouldn't be.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

coldtea 13y ago

"Ludicrous"? Are you kidding me? In any case of accidental exposure of a covert government operation involving many such parties, there would be instructions how to handle the media. Those could be known in advance (at least for some cases), or they would get a call in case of emergency with instructions on what they are allowed to reveal and how to say it. It's not different than what would happen at a multinational if there was some embarrassing incident related to one branch (e.g a costly in human lives accident). The legal/marketing team would reach to each branch pronto, with instructions what to say to the media. So, if the media get the manager of the, say, Canadian, branch, he would say more or less what the manager of the German branch would tell to his media. The only "ludicrous" thing is your misplaced scepticism -- as if things thing isn't both obvious and something that's standard practice to media handling from entities of any scale...

rcthompson 13y ago

More likely would be that the NSA (or whoever) gave all the involved companies the same standard talking points, either in the past few hours/days or years ago when each company "joined" the program, and each company loosely paraphrased those same talking points. Having all the companies issue the same denial at the same time was probably not anticipated, so they didn't coordinate with each other to avoid sounding like they're all parroting the same talking points. I think that explanation strikes an appropriate balance of competence and incompetence.

jfoster 13y ago

Or some copied the others.