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What Greenwald/Guardian said about "direct and unilateral access" is what is meant by the paraphrase of "root access". The story made it sound like an NSA anal

by mpyne 13y ago

What Greenwald/Guardian said about "direct and unilateral access" is what is meant by the paraphrase of "root access". The story made it sound like an NSA analyst could just open an xterm and copy any data about any Google/Facebook/Hotmail/Skype/etc. user, whether the company agreed or not. That is the part that is not only false, but which Greenwald has refused to back down on by just pounding the slides over and over. I don't know why I'm so surprised that a writer reporting on tech-heavy privacy issues would be so clueless about technology but it just gives me even more reason to be jaded about activists in general. Oh well, at least we still have the EFF and ACLU.

grey-area 13y ago
That phrase says nothing about root or xterm and I think you're being misleading by attempting to paraphrase it that way though I think I see how you got there. That's one possible interpretation of it (though not one Greenwald has backed), but it's equally possible, given the assertions of Snowden in the video with the article (which we now know to be true at least for phone calls), that it was an attempt to describe the experience of an analyst using such a system, requesting full access to a user's account, and getting it without interacting with google staff (after what delay we don't know), possibly without any legal paperwork other than making the request. We simply don't know enough details to be able to describe the process any better, we don't even know all the possible sources of intel for it. Since Greenwald provided the sources for his statement and the article clearly indicates which quotes are attribution and which bits are commentary I didn't interpret it the way you did, and do think it's highly misleading to characterise this as a fundamental flaw in the article, or as something the guardian has 'walked back' - the guardian is not a monolithic entity and features content from all sorts of contradictory viewpoints. The writer wasn't clueless about technology necessarily - remember this sort of writing goes through many hands on the way to publication, and attempts to synthesise knowledge from various sources for a non-technical audience, while not revealing damaging details which could leave them open to prosecution. That process is going to result in text which is not as precise or illuminating as we or the writer would like. So I'm all for correcting reporters like Greenwald where they over-reach or imply too much, and I do think he should have clarified this particular detail which has been left very vague, but we should clarify or correct, not attack and patronise, reporters who don't specify technical details, and bear in mind that technical questions of mechanism are not the only story here; there are far more important legal and ethical questions.
leoc 13y ago
Also note the Google statement from the story: > In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data." A backdoor pretty much implies unfettered (as well as clandestine) access - a limited-privileges backdoor is conceivable, but unlikely. Note that the Guardian didn't say 'here's a weaselly statement that doesn't deny what we're alleging' - it said 'here's a denial of what we are alleging'.
- grey-area 13y ago
  If we're to criticise journalists, we should hold ourselves to the standards we expect of the them. The article said: 'In a statement, Google said' You paraphrase this as the article saying: 'Here's a denial of what we are alleging' The article said or implied no such thing, as your direct quote shows, it merely attributed the quote, without comment. It didn't talk about back doors or denials, Google did, probably in response to more fantastic speculation around the Internet prior to this.
  - leoc 13y ago
    > If we're to criticise journalists, we should hold ourselves to the standards we expect of the them. In the interests of precision, let me first amend the Guardian non-paraphrase and paraphrase above to 'here's a weaselly statement that doesn't deny what the NSA document claims' and 'here's a denial of what the NSA document claims'. This matters because the article deliberately sets out to report the NSA slides instead of setting out to explicitly report the NSA slides as accurate, and Greenwald later made much of this. > The article said or implied no such thing, as your direct quote shows, it merely attributed the quote, without comment. The immediately preceding paragraph is: > Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program. This makes it clear that the next paragraph is, to the Guardian's understanding, Google denying knowledge of any such program.

by mpyne 13y ago

grey-area 13y ago

That phrase says nothing about root or xterm and I think you're being misleading by attempting to paraphrase it that way though I think I see how you got there. That's one possible interpretation of it (though not one Greenwald has backed), but it's equally possible, given the assertions of Snowden in the video with the article (which we now know to be true at least for phone calls), that it was an attempt to describe the experience of an analyst using such a system, requesting full access to a user's account, and getting it without interacting with google staff (after what delay we don't know), possibly without any legal paperwork other than making the request. We simply don't know enough details to be able to describe the process any better, we don't even know all the possible sources of intel for it. Since Greenwald provided the sources for his statement and the article clearly indicates which quotes are attribution and which bits are commentary I didn't interpret it the way you did, and do think it's highly misleading to characterise this as a fundamental flaw in the article, or as something the guardian has 'walked back' - the guardian is not a monolithic entity and features content from all sorts of contradictory viewpoints. The writer wasn't clueless about technology necessarily - remember this sort of writing goes through many hands on the way to publication, and attempts to synthesise knowledge from various sources for a non-technical audience, while not revealing damaging details which could leave them open to prosecution. That process is going to result in text which is not as precise or illuminating as we or the writer would like. So I'm all for correcting reporters like Greenwald where they over-reach or imply too much, and I do think he should have clarified this particular detail which has been left very vague, but we should clarify or correct, not attack and patronise, reporters who don't specify technical details, and bear in mind that technical questions of mechanism are not the only story here; there are far more important legal and ethical questions.

leoc 13y ago

Also note the Google statement from the story: > In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data." A backdoor pretty much implies unfettered (as well as clandestine) access - a limited-privileges backdoor is conceivable, but unlikely. Note that the Guardian didn't say 'here's a weaselly statement that doesn't deny what we're alleging' - it said 'here's a denial of what we are alleging'.

grey-area 13y ago
If we're to criticise journalists, we should hold ourselves to the standards we expect of the them. The article said: 'In a statement, Google said' You paraphrase this as the article saying: 'Here's a denial of what we are alleging' The article said or implied no such thing, as your direct quote shows, it merely attributed the quote, without comment. It didn't talk about back doors or denials, Google did, probably in response to more fantastic speculation around the Internet prior to this.
- leoc 13y ago
  > If we're to criticise journalists, we should hold ourselves to the standards we expect of the them. In the interests of precision, let me first amend the Guardian non-paraphrase and paraphrase above to 'here's a weaselly statement that doesn't deny what the NSA document claims' and 'here's a denial of what the NSA document claims'. This matters because the article deliberately sets out to report the NSA slides instead of setting out to explicitly report the NSA slides as accurate, and Greenwald later made much of this. > The article said or implied no such thing, as your direct quote shows, it merely attributed the quote, without comment. The immediately preceding paragraph is: > Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program. This makes it clear that the next paragraph is, to the Guardian's understanding, Google denying knowledge of any such program.