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I still don't understand this whole thing. Why oh why didn't Snowden's interviewer ask him to explain the tech giant's denial of PRISM? And their denial in gen

by exodust 13y ago

I still don't understand this whole thing. Why oh why didn't Snowden's interviewer ask him to explain the tech giant's denial of PRISM? And their denial in general of government access to their data beyond the court-ordered variety we all knew about? I really doubt all the tech giants are spinning the same prepared lie about not knowing anything. And if they're not lying, then where does that leave Snowden's accusations? Maybe PRISM does exist, but maybe it has limits and can't access everything it wants to, but only everything that can already be scraped? In which case, who the hell cares, we all know mass data scraping and mining is going on with our public shares and comments. Maybe PRISM does this really well, but then, again.. what's the big deal? The alternative is almost too far-fetched... that the tech giants are all lying (unlikely); that PRISM has access to their protected data without their knowledge (still unlikely); or that PRISM is fed the data via insiders within the tech giants who are like IT spies - which would make the best hollywood movie. I'd call it PRISM GAMES. Oliver Stone, stay away... you're not touching this after your 9/11 effort.

Aloisius 13y ago
Well there is a third alternative; the NSA has agents within these companies that covertly acquire the information requested and/or give direct access to the NSA without these companies' knowledge. For some services such as Google, a single network administrator and a single fiber drop close to Google HQ would probably be all that is necessary. At that point, their own hackers could go to work. It isn't like a well-trained NSA employee would have trouble getting a job at any of these companies.
chatmasta 13y ago
Or, quite simply, that "PRISM" is the name of the automated system for facilitating FISA requests.
- famousactress 13y ago
  Isn't the biggest challenge to this idea the letter from GOOG that made the rounds yesterday asking DoJ for the ability to publish aggregate numbers of these, which it implies will be evidence that this kind of large scale automation isn't happening? http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/asking-us-government-to-allow-google-to.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/asking-us-government-...

by exodust 13y ago

Aloisius 13y ago

Well there is a third alternative; the NSA has agents within these companies that covertly acquire the information requested and/or give direct access to the NSA without these companies' knowledge. For some services such as Google, a single network administrator and a single fiber drop close to Google HQ would probably be all that is necessary. At that point, their own hackers could go to work. It isn't like a well-trained NSA employee would have trouble getting a job at any of these companies.

chatmasta 13y ago

Or, quite simply, that "PRISM" is the name of the automated system for facilitating FISA requests.

famousactress 13y ago
Isn't the biggest challenge to this idea the letter from GOOG that made the rounds yesterday asking DoJ for the ability to publish aggregate numbers of these, which it implies will be evidence that this kind of large scale automation isn't happening? http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/asking-us-government-to-allow-google-to.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/asking-us-government-...