10 ms·

"and the Guardian walked the claim back" No they didn't. "The Guardian has not revised any of our articles and, to my knowledge, has no intention to do so. Th

"and the Guardian walked the claim back" No they didn't. "The Guardian has not revised any of our articles and, to my knowledge, has no intention to do so. That's because we did not claim that the NSA document alleging direct collection from the servers was true; we reported - accurately - that the NSA document claims that the program allows direct collection from the companies' servers. Before publishing, we went to the internet companies named in the documents and asked about these claims. When they denied it, we purposely presented the story as one of a major discrepancy between what the NSA document claims and what the internet companies claim, as the headline itself makes indisputably clear:" http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-partisanship-propaganda-prism http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-part...

tptacek 13y ago
I'm not interested in the semantic argument. Emily Bazelon called The Guardian out this week on the Slate political podcast, as have many others; this is now a mainstream criticism of how The Guardian reported the story. Either way: the original notion that NSA had direct access to the servers that actually operate Google Mail has been found to be unsupported by the evidence published thus far. I call this out continuously and obnoxiously on HN because it is very much not the mainstream view on HN; most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems that Google and the Guardian say they do not have.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  For reasons which should be glaringly obvious, you're not going to convince anyone on HN that a view is the right one simply because drama-hungry mass media has decided it is.
- daywalker 13y ago
  Lie, admission, lie, admission, don't you get it yet?
- revelation 13y ago
  For not being interested in "the semantic argument", you have previously shown lots of confidence in the Governments secret semantic interpretation. No evidence has been published, and who is talking about Google Mail anyway?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I'm not interested in the semantic argument about whether publishing a story that contradicts a previous story without issuing a correction on that previous story counts or does not count as a "walk back", that term having no specific technical meaning the argument can rely on. I'm not averse to all semantic arguments.
- finkin1 13y ago
  Semantics - the study of meaning. So you're saying you're only interested in a meaningless argument?
- burntsushi 13y ago
  > most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems You're mincing words. Your comments clearly indicate that you think "direct access" unambiguously means "access to servers that run GMail that the NSA can snoop on any time they like." But from what I've seen, most comments on HN adopt and acknowledge a more ambiguous definition. The one you propose is the extreme. But other definitions include an interface for the NSA to request data and have it deposited in some "drop box" that can then be accessed by the NSA (all without a warrant). It's reasonable to call this "direct access", particularly if the audience is not tech savvy. (Which is something we don't know.) Moreover, most folks here seem painfully aware that "direct access" really hasn't been qualified. It seems reasonable your definition isn't really true, but that doesn't mean the Guardian's reporting is incorrect. (The Guardian never put forward a precise definition---either because they didn't have one or were unwilling to release it.) Personally, I think you are attributing way too much certainty to the HN crowd.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    The process as I understand it: * NSA (or some other USG agency) issues a directive to the provider under authorization from FISA. No court order is required for NSA to issue directives under FISA. * If the provider is Google, Yahoo, or Facebook†, that directive is reviewed manually by the provider. * In at least the case of Yahoo, where this step is supported by court documents, but probably all the other cases too based on provider public statements, the provider has the option of refusing to comply with the directive, at which point they send lawyers to FISC. * For all intents and purposes USG never loses at FISC. * Some process happens at the provider in which data pertaining to the directive is collected, marshalled into some kind of bundle, and placed on a secure drop box server ("similar to an FTP server"); it is NSA's access to these servers that "PRISM" refers to. If you're telling me that this is the understanding most HN people have about what "direct access" means, I'd direct your attention to this very thread to rebut that argument. I'm accused upthread of "mincing words" but would respond by arguing that any attempt to characterize the process in this post as "direct access" is a much finer mince; a brunoise of words, if you will. † Because those providers have publicly stated that.
- st0p 13y ago
  So what? The NSA is harvesting data on an unprecedented scale. It might be legal but it is definitly unethical. Whether the initial reports were 100% accurate or not is irrelevant. What does matter is that this now out in the open and hopefully something changes.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    The ethics of data collection in the age of people sharing all sorts of information with Google, Facebook, etc, are not a clear cut thing. Moreover, it's not meaningless whether its illegal or not. Indeed, it makes all the difference in the world. Laws can be changed if we don't like their outcomes--a government that's ignoring the law is something else entirely.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      > The ethics of data collection in the age of people sharing all sorts of information with Google, Facebook, etc, are not a clear cut thing. It is a peculiar brand of corporatism that thinks the privileges afforded to corporations should somehow be considered when talking about the privileges given to governments. Quite the opposite of what one normally sees, but still curiously the same.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        I'm not talking about privileges, I'm talking about the nature of what is "private information." I don't think the ethics of the government collecting information you share with people on Facebook you might have met once, along with god knows how many employees at Facebook, Google, etc, are clear cut.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        And I say that how we should treat Facebook collecting data and how we should treat governments collecting data (even data from Facebook) are entirely disjoint. Anything else is a peculiar brand of corporatism.
- rickhanlonii 13y ago
  You may not be interested in a semantic argument, but it's a semantic point you're arguing. The title of the article in question[1] is: "NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others • Top-secret Prism program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Apple and Facebook • Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007" The first sentence states: "The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian." Emphasis on according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian. If you read on, the content of the article supports this title and summary. It doesn't matter what Emily Bazelon has said, it don't matter what others have said, and it certainly doesn't matter what the mainstream criticism is when determining whether or not the statements in the article are accurate. The slides say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. Guardian states the the slides state that the NSA can collect data directly from the servers of these companies. That is a demonstrable fact. In fact, I just demonstrated it. Now, I'm in the camp of people who think that whoever wrote the slides just didn't know what they were talking about. Neverthess, I'm also in the camp of people who think that the Guardian was accurate in their reporting--because the reporting is right there to be read. We could, of course, argue over the congruace between the phrases "direct access" and "collect data directly from the servers," but you said you weren't interested in semantics. [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n...
  - leoc 13y ago
    > The slides say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. Guardian states the the slides state that the NSA can collect data directly from the servers of these companies. The slides do say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. (Well, they say that the NSA uses "collection directly from the servers" of these companies, to get the quotation exactly right.) But the Guardian stated the the slides state that the NSA has root access (or similar) on the servers of these companies. It was wrong about this. The Grauniad didn't publish a story saying "the NSA has a PowerPoint presentation in which the phrase 'collection directly from the servers' appears, but we do not pretend to offer any interpretation of what may have been meant by this". What it published was a story which said (in paraphrase) "the NSA has a PowerPoint presentation in which the phrase 'collection directly from the servers' appears. What the NSA means by this is that it has root access on Google, Facebook and friends." The NSA writer was correct; the Guardian's reporting of what he said was wrong, both in the sense that it misreported what the NSA writer was claiming, and the claim it misreported him/her as making was (unsuprisingly) untrue.
- tlogan 13y ago
  If I'm on helm of NSA, I would recruit spys on important positions so that the agency can have access to any data on minutes notice. Of course, in accordance to the law. And I believe it is legal for NSA to recruit somebody in a company to spy / give NSA access to the data. My point is that it is irrelevant whether it is true or not that NSA has capability to access to all our emails. The key is whether our legal framework allows that or not. My understanding is that NSA can collect all the data it needs (emails, phone calls, etc.) and they will not break the law - even without FISA court order. So maybe the law needs to be changed...
- twelvechairs 13y ago
  I think you are making some poor semantic arguments yourself. The simple case is that of the NSA document ("collection directly from the servers of these US service providers") against google ("The U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers"). These are two competing claims, neither of which have been supported by evidence and hence the burden of proof rests equally with both cases. Anything else (By the Guardian, Slate, the 'mainstream view on HN' or yourself) is purely speculative. You seem to place the burden of proof on one claim over another and hold a very specific view on what 'direct access' means. You also seem to hold a strange interpretation of the Guardian's reporting, but I won't get into that as its largely immaterial to the real subject.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    For those keeping score, this is another of the kind of comment that lead me to believe that most HN commenters take the obvious interpretation of "direct access".
    - twelvechairs 13y ago
      What? I'm not putting forth any interpretation of 'direct access'. I appreciate that it seems you are responding to a lot of comments but I really find this comment lazy and borderline offensive.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        The two are not really competing claims; the argument over whether they are is the argument that NSA could in fact have direct access to the servers operating Google Mail. I'm not trying to single you out, sorry.
        twelvechairs 13y ago
        Are you saying that the "collection directly from the servers" claim of the NSA document is simply the systems we already know about (FISA warrants or otherwise) until proven otherwise? To me the terminology of the document probably (though not necessarily) indicates something more serious, but I'm not sure its necessarily 'cables into gmail' (which you seem to indicate as the only alternate). For instance, potentially someone working for Google may transfer selected records out manually without the knowledge of Google. Thanks but I'm not so concerned to be 'singled out' as 'lumped in'. I want to get to understand your views more than simply disagree. I hope my previous posts haven't seemed too argumentative either.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Either way: the original notion that NSA had direct access to the servers that actually operate Google Mail has been found to be unsupported by the evidence published thus far. Evidence being "Google denies it"?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    And that The Guardian ran a story contradicting it, and that Marc Ambinder reported a story suggesting that PRISM was a dropbox system and not direct access, and that Declan McCullagh ran a story with sources saying that NSA does not have access to Google Mail, and the NYT running a story with an attached court order from the FISC showing Yahoo availing itself of the opportunity to try to deny NSA access to its servers, and the idea that NSA having direct access to Google is an extraordinary claim requiring not just some evidence, but extraordinary evidence.
    - declan 13y ago
      And even more evidence that would take too long to summarize. <tptacek> is correct here.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        How many times are you going to make this exact same comment? Just upvote him if you think he's so right.
        tptacek 13y ago
        He's a reporter who has been doing reporting on this story with actual sources. His confirmation of individual comments of mine is useful, at least to me; don't worry, eventually I'll write a comment that will contain something he knows to be wrong, he'll notice it, call me out for it, and you can start jumping up and down again.
        declan 13y ago
        True!
- grandalf 13y ago
  Imagine if you were designing a system to store massive amounts of intercepted email data for archival and occasional retrieval. The design would be quite different from gmail and it would require a lot less infrastructure. I think your analysis is perhaps being biased a bit by the idea that dealing with all the email data would be massively expensive. Also, consider that phone companies already have existing government granted monopolies, while companies like Google and Facebook are significantly more vulnerable to bad press or some kind of disruption triggered by public mistrust. Hence one possible strategy for minimizing the impact of Snowden's revelations would be to admit to the phone aspect of the powerpoint and to drastically minimize the relationships with web companies. Also considering the power of ad network cookies and the amount of information stored, the intelligence value of internet companies' data dwarfs the value of phone call data by several orders of magnitude.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    You think the average American would be less concerned about direct access to Google Mail than they would about the NSA having the ability to listen to everyone's phone calls?
    - grandalf 13y ago
      I think the opposite, which is why I think the story is evolving to minimize the gmail access being done.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Perhaps it's evolving closer to what the truth actually was the whole time?
        grandalf 13y ago
        That is possible, though what we're seeing is the result of the PR response of the NSA taking effect. The NSA does not have any incentive for the truth to be revealed, only for the public to stop worrying about it.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  NSA has all the access they need. Which side of the property line their equipment resides on is a detail. Google is bound by what they're treating as a lawful order, to lie, as is anyone on NSA's team. If NSA doesn't have hardware inside Google, they have what they need to read the data at the boundaries of the Google system.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Nobody is bound to lie. That is not a FISA requirement or a requirement of any other federal statute.
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      You're very naive to believe that. The gov't somehow manages to compel people to lie despite the absence of some "Federal Pants on Fire Act" 1. Place a Warrant Canary. 2. Receive NSL. Even those who've conceived of the Warrant Canary know that it depends upon the notion that the gov't will not coerce the NSL recipient to leave the Canary unmodified. We don't have to use the Warrant Canary hypothetical to see that the US gov't has in the past used force to compel individuals to lie in the furtherance of its goals. Police forced Rachel Hoffman to arrange a drugs buy and wear a surveillance device to the proposed exchange. This is a common police practice carried out by government agents at every level of government. If the government will use such tactics for drugs, they will most certainly use them for national security.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        I don't follow any of this. I don't know what warrant canaries have to do with the fictitious belief that NSLs compel companies to lie.
        fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
        Well, if you place a warrant canary, and then receive an NSL, the warrant canary must be modified, as that is its sole purpose. If you leave the warrant canary in tact, then you've lied. The act of changing the warrant canary will by definition violate the (secrecy) terms of the NSL and possibly invoke gov't reprisal. Even without the warrant canary the terms of an NSL may compel an individual to lie through coercion, depending upon circumstance. I didn't say that the NSL compels each recipient to lie, in every case. I said the gov't can and does compel individuals to lie. That's not a "fictitious belief" it's a fact. Then I offered a concrete example of widespread gov't conduct supporting that claim. If you keep waiting to see it spelled out in black and white, "Be it ordered on this day the NSA under the authorization of Congress and President Obama (with all their signatures) that you shall go on the Today Show and Charlie Rose's show and tell everyone that we can't read everyone's email and that we're all a great bunch of guys." you're likely to have to wait a while. You're being obtuse and I think you know that. It probably works well in other areas of your life, but it makes you ill-suited to make judgments about non-trivial issues because it is rare that all relevant facts become obvious as an atomic operation.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Unless I have missed something, Guardian has NOT said the NSA does not have direct access. The Guardian has reported that an NSA document says they do, and that Google says they don't. As far as I have seen, the Guardian has not made a claim either way. You choose to trust Google. A lot of other people here choose to trust the NSA documents more.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  "I'm not interested in the semantic argument." Stop making one then.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  > I call this out continuously and obnoxiously on HN because it is very much not the mainstream view on HN; most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems that Google and the Guardian say they do not have. Ah, I was wondering why you were doing this. Personally I prefer to believe, when it is hinted that the NSA might have access to my emails, that this is true and later be proven wrong (which IMO hasn't been done conclusively yet), rather than the other way around: assuming everything is fine, and then piece by piece being proven wrong as more evidence trickles in. Note that the above is a hypothetical example, since, being a EU citizen, I already know for a couple of months that the NSA in fact does have the ability to request any of my data without a warrant, given that it resides on a US server. ... Come to think of it, could it be that also influences your perception of what is "the mainstream view" on HN? A lot of people do not explicitly state they are not US-citizens every time they mention how upset they are the NSA can read their emails.
jholman 13y ago
That quote IS Greenwald walking it back, while saying he's not walking it back. Greenwald is saying, in effect, "Well, I'm not saying the NSA does or doesn't have direct access; I'm just telling you that I saw a powerpoint slide that says that." Uh huh. Basically I'm agreeing with tptacek's downthread point: the slide deck claims "direct access", but other than that slide deck, there has been no evidence to support this, and some evidence against it. As I've said before, I think we should assume that slide deck is a little hyperbolic. This is a deck that claims you can real-time monitor all communications in the world for only $20M. I'm not saying it contains no truth; I'm saying it's a _slide_ _deck_. Also, btw, the Greenwald article you quote is not his finest. From what I've read in the last two weeks, I respect his agenda, and I respect his efforts to air this story, but some of his self-analysis is seriously lacking. If you're interested in my extensive dissection of that article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5884619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5884619

tptacek 13y ago

I'm not interested in the semantic argument. Emily Bazelon called The Guardian out this week on the Slate political podcast, as have many others; this is now a mainstream criticism of how The Guardian reported the story. Either way: the original notion that NSA had direct access to the servers that actually operate Google Mail has been found to be unsupported by the evidence published thus far. I call this out continuously and obnoxiously on HN because it is very much not the mainstream view on HN; most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems that Google and the Guardian say they do not have.

nknighthb 13y ago
For reasons which should be glaringly obvious, you're not going to convince anyone on HN that a view is the right one simply because drama-hungry mass media has decided it is.
daywalker 13y ago
Lie, admission, lie, admission, don't you get it yet?
revelation 13y ago
For not being interested in "the semantic argument", you have previously shown lots of confidence in the Governments secret semantic interpretation. No evidence has been published, and who is talking about Google Mail anyway?
- tptacek 13y ago
  I'm not interested in the semantic argument about whether publishing a story that contradicts a previous story without issuing a correction on that previous story counts or does not count as a "walk back", that term having no specific technical meaning the argument can rely on. I'm not averse to all semantic arguments.
finkin1 13y ago
Semantics - the study of meaning. So you're saying you're only interested in a meaningless argument?
burntsushi 13y ago
> most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems You're mincing words. Your comments clearly indicate that you think "direct access" unambiguously means "access to servers that run GMail that the NSA can snoop on any time they like." But from what I've seen, most comments on HN adopt and acknowledge a more ambiguous definition. The one you propose is the extreme. But other definitions include an interface for the NSA to request data and have it deposited in some "drop box" that can then be accessed by the NSA (all without a warrant). It's reasonable to call this "direct access", particularly if the audience is not tech savvy. (Which is something we don't know.) Moreover, most folks here seem painfully aware that "direct access" really hasn't been qualified. It seems reasonable your definition isn't really true, but that doesn't mean the Guardian's reporting is incorrect. (The Guardian never put forward a precise definition---either because they didn't have one or were unwilling to release it.) Personally, I think you are attributing way too much certainty to the HN crowd.
- tptacek 13y ago
  The process as I understand it: * NSA (or some other USG agency) issues a directive to the provider under authorization from FISA. No court order is required for NSA to issue directives under FISA. * If the provider is Google, Yahoo, or Facebook†, that directive is reviewed manually by the provider. * In at least the case of Yahoo, where this step is supported by court documents, but probably all the other cases too based on provider public statements, the provider has the option of refusing to comply with the directive, at which point they send lawyers to FISC. * For all intents and purposes USG never loses at FISC. * Some process happens at the provider in which data pertaining to the directive is collected, marshalled into some kind of bundle, and placed on a secure drop box server ("similar to an FTP server"); it is NSA's access to these servers that "PRISM" refers to. If you're telling me that this is the understanding most HN people have about what "direct access" means, I'd direct your attention to this very thread to rebut that argument. I'm accused upthread of "mincing words" but would respond by arguing that any attempt to characterize the process in this post as "direct access" is a much finer mince; a brunoise of words, if you will. † Because those providers have publicly stated that.
st0p 13y ago
So what? The NSA is harvesting data on an unprecedented scale. It might be legal but it is definitly unethical. Whether the initial reports were 100% accurate or not is irrelevant. What does matter is that this now out in the open and hopefully something changes.
- rayiner 13y ago
  The ethics of data collection in the age of people sharing all sorts of information with Google, Facebook, etc, are not a clear cut thing. Moreover, it's not meaningless whether its illegal or not. Indeed, it makes all the difference in the world. Laws can be changed if we don't like their outcomes--a government that's ignoring the law is something else entirely.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    > The ethics of data collection in the age of people sharing all sorts of information with Google, Facebook, etc, are not a clear cut thing. It is a peculiar brand of corporatism that thinks the privileges afforded to corporations should somehow be considered when talking about the privileges given to governments. Quite the opposite of what one normally sees, but still curiously the same.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      I'm not talking about privileges, I'm talking about the nature of what is "private information." I don't think the ethics of the government collecting information you share with people on Facebook you might have met once, along with god knows how many employees at Facebook, Google, etc, are clear cut.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        And I say that how we should treat Facebook collecting data and how we should treat governments collecting data (even data from Facebook) are entirely disjoint. Anything else is a peculiar brand of corporatism.
rickhanlonii 13y ago
You may not be interested in a semantic argument, but it's a semantic point you're arguing. The title of the article in question[1] is: "NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others • Top-secret Prism program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Apple and Facebook • Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007" The first sentence states: "The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian." Emphasis on according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian. If you read on, the content of the article supports this title and summary. It doesn't matter what Emily Bazelon has said, it don't matter what others have said, and it certainly doesn't matter what the mainstream criticism is when determining whether or not the statements in the article are accurate. The slides say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. Guardian states the the slides state that the NSA can collect data directly from the servers of these companies. That is a demonstrable fact. In fact, I just demonstrated it. Now, I'm in the camp of people who think that whoever wrote the slides just didn't know what they were talking about. Neverthess, I'm also in the camp of people who think that the Guardian was accurate in their reporting--because the reporting is right there to be read. We could, of course, argue over the congruace between the phrases "direct access" and "collect data directly from the servers," but you said you weren't interested in semantics. [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n...
- leoc 13y ago
  > The slides say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. Guardian states the the slides state that the NSA can collect data directly from the servers of these companies. The slides do say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. (Well, they say that the NSA uses "collection directly from the servers" of these companies, to get the quotation exactly right.) But the Guardian stated the the slides state that the NSA has root access (or similar) on the servers of these companies. It was wrong about this. The Grauniad didn't publish a story saying "the NSA has a PowerPoint presentation in which the phrase 'collection directly from the servers' appears, but we do not pretend to offer any interpretation of what may have been meant by this". What it published was a story which said (in paraphrase) "the NSA has a PowerPoint presentation in which the phrase 'collection directly from the servers' appears. What the NSA means by this is that it has root access on Google, Facebook and friends." The NSA writer was correct; the Guardian's reporting of what he said was wrong, both in the sense that it misreported what the NSA writer was claiming, and the claim it misreported him/her as making was (unsuprisingly) untrue.
tlogan 13y ago
If I'm on helm of NSA, I would recruit spys on important positions so that the agency can have access to any data on minutes notice. Of course, in accordance to the law. And I believe it is legal for NSA to recruit somebody in a company to spy / give NSA access to the data. My point is that it is irrelevant whether it is true or not that NSA has capability to access to all our emails. The key is whether our legal framework allows that or not. My understanding is that NSA can collect all the data it needs (emails, phone calls, etc.) and they will not break the law - even without FISA court order. So maybe the law needs to be changed...
twelvechairs 13y ago
I think you are making some poor semantic arguments yourself. The simple case is that of the NSA document ("collection directly from the servers of these US service providers") against google ("The U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers"). These are two competing claims, neither of which have been supported by evidence and hence the burden of proof rests equally with both cases. Anything else (By the Guardian, Slate, the 'mainstream view on HN' or yourself) is purely speculative. You seem to place the burden of proof on one claim over another and hold a very specific view on what 'direct access' means. You also seem to hold a strange interpretation of the Guardian's reporting, but I won't get into that as its largely immaterial to the real subject.
- tptacek 13y ago
  For those keeping score, this is another of the kind of comment that lead me to believe that most HN commenters take the obvious interpretation of "direct access".
  - twelvechairs 13y ago
    What? I'm not putting forth any interpretation of 'direct access'. I appreciate that it seems you are responding to a lot of comments but I really find this comment lazy and borderline offensive.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      The two are not really competing claims; the argument over whether they are is the argument that NSA could in fact have direct access to the servers operating Google Mail. I'm not trying to single you out, sorry.
      - twelvechairs 13y ago
        Are you saying that the "collection directly from the servers" claim of the NSA document is simply the systems we already know about (FISA warrants or otherwise) until proven otherwise? To me the terminology of the document probably (though not necessarily) indicates something more serious, but I'm not sure its necessarily 'cables into gmail' (which you seem to indicate as the only alternate). For instance, potentially someone working for Google may transfer selected records out manually without the knowledge of Google. Thanks but I'm not so concerned to be 'singled out' as 'lumped in'. I want to get to understand your views more than simply disagree. I hope my previous posts haven't seemed too argumentative either.
coldtea 13y ago
>Either way: the original notion that NSA had direct access to the servers that actually operate Google Mail has been found to be unsupported by the evidence published thus far. Evidence being "Google denies it"?
- tptacek 13y ago
  And that The Guardian ran a story contradicting it, and that Marc Ambinder reported a story suggesting that PRISM was a dropbox system and not direct access, and that Declan McCullagh ran a story with sources saying that NSA does not have access to Google Mail, and the NYT running a story with an attached court order from the FISC showing Yahoo availing itself of the opportunity to try to deny NSA access to its servers, and the idea that NSA having direct access to Google is an extraordinary claim requiring not just some evidence, but extraordinary evidence.
  - declan 13y ago
    And even more evidence that would take too long to summarize. <tptacek> is correct here.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      How many times are you going to make this exact same comment? Just upvote him if you think he's so right.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        He's a reporter who has been doing reporting on this story with actual sources. His confirmation of individual comments of mine is useful, at least to me; don't worry, eventually I'll write a comment that will contain something he knows to be wrong, he'll notice it, call me out for it, and you can start jumping up and down again.
        declan 13y ago
        True!
grandalf 13y ago
Imagine if you were designing a system to store massive amounts of intercepted email data for archival and occasional retrieval. The design would be quite different from gmail and it would require a lot less infrastructure. I think your analysis is perhaps being biased a bit by the idea that dealing with all the email data would be massively expensive. Also, consider that phone companies already have existing government granted monopolies, while companies like Google and Facebook are significantly more vulnerable to bad press or some kind of disruption triggered by public mistrust. Hence one possible strategy for minimizing the impact of Snowden's revelations would be to admit to the phone aspect of the powerpoint and to drastically minimize the relationships with web companies. Also considering the power of ad network cookies and the amount of information stored, the intelligence value of internet companies' data dwarfs the value of phone call data by several orders of magnitude.
- tptacek 13y ago
  You think the average American would be less concerned about direct access to Google Mail than they would about the NSA having the ability to listen to everyone's phone calls?
  - grandalf 13y ago
    I think the opposite, which is why I think the story is evolving to minimize the gmail access being done.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Perhaps it's evolving closer to what the truth actually was the whole time?
      - grandalf 13y ago
        That is possible, though what we're seeing is the result of the PR response of the NSA taking effect. The NSA does not have any incentive for the truth to be revealed, only for the public to stop worrying about it.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
NSA has all the access they need. Which side of the property line their equipment resides on is a detail. Google is bound by what they're treating as a lawful order, to lie, as is anyone on NSA's team. If NSA doesn't have hardware inside Google, they have what they need to read the data at the boundaries of the Google system.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Nobody is bound to lie. That is not a FISA requirement or a requirement of any other federal statute.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    You're very naive to believe that. The gov't somehow manages to compel people to lie despite the absence of some "Federal Pants on Fire Act" 1. Place a Warrant Canary. 2. Receive NSL. Even those who've conceived of the Warrant Canary know that it depends upon the notion that the gov't will not coerce the NSL recipient to leave the Canary unmodified. We don't have to use the Warrant Canary hypothetical to see that the US gov't has in the past used force to compel individuals to lie in the furtherance of its goals. Police forced Rachel Hoffman to arrange a drugs buy and wear a surveillance device to the proposed exchange. This is a common police practice carried out by government agents at every level of government. If the government will use such tactics for drugs, they will most certainly use them for national security.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I don't follow any of this. I don't know what warrant canaries have to do with the fictitious belief that NSLs compel companies to lie.
      - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
        Well, if you place a warrant canary, and then receive an NSL, the warrant canary must be modified, as that is its sole purpose. If you leave the warrant canary in tact, then you've lied. The act of changing the warrant canary will by definition violate the (secrecy) terms of the NSL and possibly invoke gov't reprisal. Even without the warrant canary the terms of an NSL may compel an individual to lie through coercion, depending upon circumstance. I didn't say that the NSL compels each recipient to lie, in every case. I said the gov't can and does compel individuals to lie. That's not a "fictitious belief" it's a fact. Then I offered a concrete example of widespread gov't conduct supporting that claim. If you keep waiting to see it spelled out in black and white, "Be it ordered on this day the NSA under the authorization of Congress and President Obama (with all their signatures) that you shall go on the Today Show and Charlie Rose's show and tell everyone that we can't read everyone's email and that we're all a great bunch of guys." you're likely to have to wait a while. You're being obtuse and I think you know that. It probably works well in other areas of your life, but it makes you ill-suited to make judgments about non-trivial issues because it is rare that all relevant facts become obvious as an atomic operation.
vidarh 13y ago
Unless I have missed something, Guardian has NOT said the NSA does not have direct access. The Guardian has reported that an NSA document says they do, and that Google says they don't. As far as I have seen, the Guardian has not made a claim either way. You choose to trust Google. A lot of other people here choose to trust the NSA documents more.
alan_cx 13y ago
"I'm not interested in the semantic argument." Stop making one then.
tripzilch 13y ago
> I call this out continuously and obnoxiously on HN because it is very much not the mainstream view on HN; most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems that Google and the Guardian say they do not have. Ah, I was wondering why you were doing this. Personally I prefer to believe, when it is hinted that the NSA might have access to my emails, that this is true and later be proven wrong (which IMO hasn't been done conclusively yet), rather than the other way around: assuming everything is fine, and then piece by piece being proven wrong as more evidence trickles in. Note that the above is a hypothetical example, since, being a EU citizen, I already know for a couple of months that the NSA in fact does have the ability to request any of my data without a warrant, given that it resides on a US server. ... Come to think of it, could it be that also influences your perception of what is "the mainstream view" on HN? A lot of people do not explicitly state they are not US-citizens every time they mention how upset they are the NSA can read their emails.

jholman 13y ago

That quote IS Greenwald walking it back, while saying he's not walking it back. Greenwald is saying, in effect, "Well, I'm not saying the NSA does or doesn't have direct access; I'm just telling you that I saw a powerpoint slide that says that." Uh huh. Basically I'm agreeing with tptacek's downthread point: the slide deck claims "direct access", but other than that slide deck, there has been no evidence to support this, and some evidence against it. As I've said before, I think we should assume that slide deck is a little hyperbolic. This is a deck that claims you can real-time monitor all communications in the world for only $20M. I'm not saying it contains no truth; I'm saying it's a _slide_ _deck_. Also, btw, the Greenwald article you quote is not his finest. From what I've read in the last two weeks, I respect his agenda, and I respect his efforts to air this story, but some of his self-analysis is seriously lacking. If you're interested in my extensive dissection of that article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5884619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5884619