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The real question clamoring for a clear statement is far more complex: Does any government, US or otherwise, their agents, representatives, contractors or NGO'
by robomartin 13y ago
The real question clamoring for a clear statement is far more complex:
Does any government, US or otherwise, their agents, representatives, contractors or NGO's have access, directly or indirectly, through any means, to <insert company name here> DATA, FILES, COMMUNICATIONS, LOGS or any other information having any relationship whatsoever to <insert company name here> users?
This could be, and probably should be, refined, IANAL.
The point is simple: We don't care about "direct access to servers". We care about access to data. And this can be provided through many channels, direct and indirect. It can even be provided via daily tape backup dumps. Of course, it can be provided to organizations peripherally working for or with a government yet not directly to a government agency. And, finally, it could be provided to another government that, in turn, can pipe it back to US governnment agencies or collaborators.
Anyone can say "The US government does not have direct access to our servers" while still feeding them a firehose of information through alternative means.
- magicalist 13y ago"have access, directly or indirectly, through any means" is a not a useful basis for the question, because a regular search warrant certainly qualifies as that.
- robomartin 13y agoCriticism accepted. Now, could you suggest better language?
- mpyne 13y agoThe answer is "Yes" and has been since the Cold War. I think the shocking part was that the NSA might have been able to essentially run grep themselves on a company's servers (though apparently it's not that simple), but that's not the question you're asking.