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Ad. 1 I think you are missing the point - "not providing direct access" is a bit like Bill Clinton saying he did not have sex with Monica Levinsky, if some comp

by stiff 13y ago

Ad. 1 I think you are missing the point - "not providing direct access" is a bit like Bill Clinton saying he did not have sex with Monica Levinsky, if some company sends some institution a complete database dump of all customer personal data it is not "direct access to the servers" but it is just as bad in terms of privacy implications, so the phrase means nothing in the end.

comex 13y ago
To be clear, while I'm not disagreeing with you about the meaning of "direct access", in this case, the rest of the statement clearly states that Apple is not doing that: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities."
- vidarh 13y ago
  Considering some of the other revelations about the workings of FISA, how do you know that Apple has not been given a request for "all current and future information about all users", and decided that it is "appropriate" and that given the order, the "narrowest possible set" of information is all of it? (while they do indicate the number of requests, users and devices affected by data handed over to law enforcement, the use of that term itself is curious - it's not law enforcement the noise has been over, but intelligence agencies, and particularly NSA) It may very well be that they have not had to deal with any broad requests from intelligence agencies, but the statement most certainly does not preclude it.
quaunaut 13y ago
We have literally no reason to believe that they are doing a database dump. And I'll also refer you to point 3 again- if all they're getting is database dumps(even if daily), why are the claims so much more? I also have a hard time believing they're getting DB dumps, even so- Facebook alone would be a DB dump at an insane scale. Unless they're only taking in textual data, which of course could be a lot more manageable. I also have to wonder what one of the slides means(and maybe this is an opportunity for someone to enlighten me): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg What is it referring to as the 'cost' being $20m a year? There's no way that could be the total program cost- that'd barely employ the engineers required to build out the system, let alone the data scientists, analysts, and more that would have to support the system. Nor could it count for hardware costs. So then in that case, is it an advertising packet for other agencies to hop on? Only $20m to have access to their firehose? Genuinely curious here if anyone's figured this one out.
- eliasmacpherson 13y ago
  http://boingboing.net/2013/06/16/what-would-it-cost-to-store-al.html http://boingboing.net/2013/06/16/what-would-it-cost-to-store... Someone has done the math on the calls aspect, billing $27m for voice calls. I would bet text is cheaper than call data.
necubi 13y ago
Are you bothering to read these things, or just searching for the term "direct access" and calling it a day? From the statement: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." From Google's: "Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false. " What about that is weasely or unclear to you? They categorically deny providing broad data to the government. Of course they can't say they don't provide any access, because they're obligated by law to comply with warrants. But the accusation was that they provide direct access (those words that you all are so obsessed with appear in the Guardian article), with the implication that the NSA can just go and take whatever data it wants with no oversight. Unless you believe that Apple, Google, et al. are just plain lying, that is clearly not the case.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Notice that the paragraphs immediately before that specifically talks about data passed to law enforcement and plays down the type of requests, after the paragraph before that talks about national security. Since when would anyone start to lump NSA in with "law enforcement". The focus on law enforcement in general in that statement is curious since that's not really what all the noise has been about. Maybe their PR team are just a bunch of buffoons that have still not realised that these statements gets dissected, but it is rather odd that they when releasing a statement to try to stem criticism based on their previous choice of words again choose wording that is so ambiguous In fact, if I were to trust this (and I can't decide if I should), my main reason for trusting them is that I'm wondering if they wouldn't just flat out lie and give a much stronger denial if they are in fact feeding the NSA with tons of data.
  - Intermernet 13y ago
    I didn't know this until a minute ago, but it seems that the NSA have a Police branch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_agencies#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_agencie... and http://www.nsa.gov/careers/faqs/ http://www.nsa.gov/careers/faqs/). I wonder if they serve their requests via that branch, or another. it'd be convenient to serve the requests from a more bureaucratic branch of the agency in order to allow them to fall outside of "law enforcement requests".
stiff 13y ago
Wow, whatever happened to reading comprehension? Did I say Apple sends database dumps to the government? All I am doing is explaining using an example why people might consider the wording shady especially it is so gladly used by different companies.

by stiff 13y ago

comex 13y ago

To be clear, while I'm not disagreeing with you about the meaning of "direct access", in this case, the rest of the statement clearly states that Apple is not doing that: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities."

vidarh 13y ago
Considering some of the other revelations about the workings of FISA, how do you know that Apple has not been given a request for "all current and future information about all users", and decided that it is "appropriate" and that given the order, the "narrowest possible set" of information is all of it? (while they do indicate the number of requests, users and devices affected by data handed over to law enforcement, the use of that term itself is curious - it's not law enforcement the noise has been over, but intelligence agencies, and particularly NSA) It may very well be that they have not had to deal with any broad requests from intelligence agencies, but the statement most certainly does not preclude it.

quaunaut 13y ago

We have literally no reason to believe that they are doing a database dump. And I'll also refer you to point 3 again- if all they're getting is database dumps(even if daily), why are the claims so much more? I also have a hard time believing they're getting DB dumps, even so- Facebook alone would be a DB dump at an insane scale. Unless they're only taking in textual data, which of course could be a lot more manageable. I also have to wonder what one of the slides means(and maybe this is an opportunity for someone to enlighten me): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg What is it referring to as the 'cost' being $20m a year? There's no way that could be the total program cost- that'd barely employ the engineers required to build out the system, let alone the data scientists, analysts, and more that would have to support the system. Nor could it count for hardware costs. So then in that case, is it an advertising packet for other agencies to hop on? Only $20m to have access to their firehose? Genuinely curious here if anyone's figured this one out.

eliasmacpherson 13y ago
http://boingboing.net/2013/06/16/what-would-it-cost-to-store-al.html http://boingboing.net/2013/06/16/what-would-it-cost-to-store... Someone has done the math on the calls aspect, billing $27m for voice calls. I would bet text is cheaper than call data.

necubi 13y ago

Are you bothering to read these things, or just searching for the term "direct access" and calling it a day? From the statement: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." From Google's: "Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false. " What about that is weasely or unclear to you? They categorically deny providing broad data to the government. Of course they can't say they don't provide any access, because they're obligated by law to comply with warrants. But the accusation was that they provide direct access (those words that you all are so obsessed with appear in the Guardian article), with the implication that the NSA can just go and take whatever data it wants with no oversight. Unless you believe that Apple, Google, et al. are just plain lying, that is clearly not the case.

vidarh 13y ago
Notice that the paragraphs immediately before that specifically talks about data passed to law enforcement and plays down the type of requests, after the paragraph before that talks about national security. Since when would anyone start to lump NSA in with "law enforcement". The focus on law enforcement in general in that statement is curious since that's not really what all the noise has been about. Maybe their PR team are just a bunch of buffoons that have still not realised that these statements gets dissected, but it is rather odd that they when releasing a statement to try to stem criticism based on their previous choice of words again choose wording that is so ambiguous In fact, if I were to trust this (and I can't decide if I should), my main reason for trusting them is that I'm wondering if they wouldn't just flat out lie and give a much stronger denial if they are in fact feeding the NSA with tons of data.
- Intermernet 13y ago
  I didn't know this until a minute ago, but it seems that the NSA have a Police branch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_agencies#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_agencie... and http://www.nsa.gov/careers/faqs/ http://www.nsa.gov/careers/faqs/). I wonder if they serve their requests via that branch, or another. it'd be convenient to serve the requests from a more bureaucratic branch of the agency in order to allow them to fall outside of "law enforcement requests".

stiff 13y ago

Wow, whatever happened to reading comprehension? Did I say Apple sends database dumps to the government? All I am doing is explaining using an example why people might consider the wording shady especially it is so gladly used by different companies.