5 ms·

PR theater. After how these companies reacted to the initial leaks, I can't think of another possible scenario other than the CEOs sitting in a room with govern

by sker 13y ago

PR theater. After how these companies reacted to the initial leaks, I can't think of another possible scenario other than the CEOs sitting in a room with government officials discussing the best strategy for damage control, and the government giving them green light to sue. But I guess I'm just stating the obvious.

MarcScott 13y ago
My thoughts exactly. The post sought to position Microsoft and Google on the moral high ground, linking them to the values of the founding fathers. If they wanted the moral high ground, they should have sued years ago. They've lost my trust, and no PR exercise is going to win it back.
- frank_boyd 13y ago
  Also, remember the initial reaction of the NSA partner companies when they were confronted about their mass surveillance activities for the first time? They lied straight to our faces and thought we would just accept that and continue to buy and/or use their stuff.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Please link to the lies. As far as I can tell, the line has always been "we comply with legal orders", "we do not offer direct access", "no one has our private keys/broken our encryption". The only contradiction is peoples' interpretation of vague "direct access" mention in a PowerPoint deck. Microsoft reiterated their position, explained that yes, they review every order, they do not just dump data on all customers over some private link, the encryption is sound, but of course they need to hand over data they do have. If I'm wrong on this, I'd certainly appreciate a correction.
    - D9u 13y ago
      This was fairly mainstream news... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
    - belorn 13y ago
      They happen to omit that they got paid for delivering peoples private information to the NSA. Its one thing to be forced to deliver some kind of information against your will. It something else if you do it like a shop, providing goods in return for revenue.
      - gizmo686 13y ago
        Did they deliver private information without a legal order to do so? If they were legally obligated to do something which has a non-negligable cost, they are entitled to compensation. In the same way that you might have to pay for a FOIA request, because it costs money to provide the data.
        genwin 13y ago
        Yes, if a factory is legally ordered to make a weapon to be used against innocents, of course they should both make it and get paid for that. The law is the law, and it costs money to make the weapon.
    - genwin 13y ago
      If it walks like a duck... The NSA's Bluffdale UT facility is obviously built to handle more than a few thousand FISA requests. More like it could handle a quadrillion such "requests".
- haberman 13y ago
  > If they wanted the moral high ground, they should have sued years ago. Google has received high marks from the EFF for fighting for users' privacy rights in the courts and in congress for three years: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2012 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2012 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2011 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2011 This lawsuit is just a continuation of what they have already been doing for years.
  - MarcScott 13y ago
    The EFF report was compiled prior to the Snowden revelations. There is no star rating for "Allowing warrantless access to a user's data in contravention to the 4th Amendment". I should think in the current climate only Lavabit would receive a positive rating from the EFF.
d4nt 13y ago
But this is the public debate that Snowdon called for. The leaks put pressure on tech companies to defend their reputation and when they do, each new development keeps the story going.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  What public debate are you talking about? Look around you. Do you see anyone besides techies and the libertarian fringe talking about eternal and perpetual surveillance? I sure as hell don't.
  - juzfoo 13y ago
    I just had a conference call with one of the clients on a project which he wanted to talk about. He wasnt very keen to share the docs on the google(he is into NDA and all that), but he was okay sharing that on Skype because skype is peer to peer. The point is everyone who matters enough knows about what was going on to make enough impact on the business of these tech companies. They may not be on the street demanding, but they are mulling over the consequences and alternatives regardless.
    - infinite8s 13y ago
      Except that he was misinformed. Skype started relaying through a central server after Microsoft purchased it and is no longer peer-to-peer.
      - ptwiggens 13y ago
        Skype specifically refuted that rumor after it came out. That being said, based on everything that has come out in Snowden's documents and other reporting, I now believe all Skype communications are compromised.
  - javajosh 13y ago
    This, Hacker News, is public debate. Don't discount that just because it's not CNN or The New York Times. (Or because pg or his minions can edit/delete content at their whim, which has happened to me before). As time goes on the less and less reliable I find the media to be when gauging public sentiment. 90% of the people I've talked to about the NSA scandal, all across the political spectrum, have been horrified by the government's behavior. As depressed as I get watching the poor news coverage of the scandal, and the implication that people don't care about it, or are more concerned with "getting Snowden" than what he revealed, just simply talking to people makes me feel a lot better.
dylangs1030 13y ago
How do you know it's just PR theater, and that these companies aren't just trying to legitimately defend their reputation? You dismiss the entire story and claim that it's so obvious, but how can any of us know that right now? And, in the face of not knowing, why default to an explanation other than what has been given to us?
- frenger 13y ago
  "And, in the face of not knowing, why default to an explanation other than what has been given to us?" gut feeling based on existing evidence and experience.
- jbjohns 13y ago
  When it comes to security, your default position should always be one of extreme scepticism. Believing "what has been given to us" is what got us in this mess to begin with.
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    I understand what you mean, but I'm not opposed to extreme skepticism. It's alternative explanations that seem contrived that I'm opposed to. There is a difference between extreme skepticism in the face of one story, and postulating hypothetical scenarios that have equal or higher burdens or proof, and are less likely or more difficult to demonstrate. In fact, in terms of logic, the two are diametrically opposed.
- devx 13y ago
  Well it's obviously both. Why are they fighting against it now and not before? Because they fear losing customers. So how do they win or keep the customers? With "PR battles" such as these. I'm sure they want to win these cases, but they wouldn't do this in complete secret, would they? They want the public to know about it, hoping this way it gets them to gain a tiny bit of trust back.
- grandalf 13y ago
  The time to file a lawsuit was years ago when the programs started. Google and Microsoft are now in the same category of privatized government "partners" as Halliburton and Lockheed. This goes beyond simple diffusion of responsibility, leaders at Google and Microsoft were complicit in the crimes the NSA committed and did nothing to stop them. IBM was able to eventually live down its involvement in the holocaust. In today's world there is no excuse for a modern tech company led by wealthy, enlightened people to commit these kinds of wrongs. Ironically, it's as if Google's mantra became "Be Evil". Such doings (empowering the NSA, IRS, etc. to snoop on innocent people for the express purpose of entrapping them or contriving other evidence) are pretty much the definition of exactly the kind of insidious evil that one would hope to be able to trust its service providers not to engage in. My prediction is that within a few months as viable open source alternatives for Google and Microsoft services become available, we'll see lots of people leaving their cloud platforms/services.
frank_boyd 13y ago
> Microsoft and Google are to sue the US government to win the right to reveal more information about official requests for user data. Totally irrelevant, because: We know for a fact that the NSA has installed hardware at all these companies (Microsoft/Skype, Google, Apple, Facebook, AOL, Paltalk, etc.). They don't need to put in any official requests for user data to get the data. Furthermore, we also know that 75% of all communication data is being intercepted/covered by the NSA (today! Work in progress...). Why would any official requests for user data be relevant, given these circumstances?
- lutusp 13y ago
  >> Microsoft and Google are to sue the US government to win the right to reveal more information about official requests for user data. > Totally irrelevant ... Irrelevant only to people who don't understand politics. The NSA isn't asking for cooperation from these companies because they actually need it, but because it provides political cover. In the * * itstorm that will surely result from future revelations of spying on U.S. citizens, the NSA can honestly say, "These companies cooperated in data collection." > Why would any official requests for user data be relevant, given these circumstances? As is often said, you may not care about politics, but politics cares about you.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Citation for "the NSA has installed hardware"? Google has explicitly denied this. If they've retracted that statement, I'd love to see it. The NSA has installed hardware on cables, but that's been known for nearly a decade. Intercepting unencrypted communications isn't much of a feat. It just takes some time and money.
  - frank_boyd 13y ago
    Here's just 1 example regarding Microsoft and Skype: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c... > Another newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook email. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption." > Microsoft's co-operation was not limited to Outlook.com. An entry dated 8 April 2013 describes how the company worked "for many months" with the FBI – which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley on Prism – to allow Prism access without separate authorization to its cloud storage service SkyDrive. Would you honestly believe the NSA would want that from a company like Microsoft but not from a company like Google (whose main activity consists of the collection of data in order to build the most precise user profiles to advance the targeting of their ads = ROI)? The installations were also mentioned in the slides published by the Guardian, you should read all of them.
sixothree 13y ago
They would not be suing if they were expecting any sort of major defeat. It would destroy their reputation further. So yes, they have already consulted with the government on this. We should expect a very limited amount of carefully parsed information to be revealed as a result of this suit. Nothing more, nothing less.
costapopescu 13y ago
Exactly, its damage control. If they wanted to reveal more information about requests for user data, they could leak it anonymously.

by sker 13y ago

MarcScott 13y ago

My thoughts exactly. The post sought to position Microsoft and Google on the moral high ground, linking them to the values of the founding fathers. If they wanted the moral high ground, they should have sued years ago. They've lost my trust, and no PR exercise is going to win it back.

frank_boyd 13y ago
Also, remember the initial reaction of the NSA partner companies when they were confronted about their mass surveillance activities for the first time? They lied straight to our faces and thought we would just accept that and continue to buy and/or use their stuff.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Please link to the lies. As far as I can tell, the line has always been "we comply with legal orders", "we do not offer direct access", "no one has our private keys/broken our encryption". The only contradiction is peoples' interpretation of vague "direct access" mention in a PowerPoint deck. Microsoft reiterated their position, explained that yes, they review every order, they do not just dump data on all customers over some private link, the encryption is sound, but of course they need to hand over data they do have. If I'm wrong on this, I'd certainly appreciate a correction.
  - D9u 13y ago
    This was fairly mainstream news... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
  - belorn 13y ago
    They happen to omit that they got paid for delivering peoples private information to the NSA. Its one thing to be forced to deliver some kind of information against your will. It something else if you do it like a shop, providing goods in return for revenue.
    - gizmo686 13y ago
      Did they deliver private information without a legal order to do so? If they were legally obligated to do something which has a non-negligable cost, they are entitled to compensation. In the same way that you might have to pay for a FOIA request, because it costs money to provide the data.
      - genwin 13y ago
        Yes, if a factory is legally ordered to make a weapon to be used against innocents, of course they should both make it and get paid for that. The law is the law, and it costs money to make the weapon.
  - genwin 13y ago
    If it walks like a duck... The NSA's Bluffdale UT facility is obviously built to handle more than a few thousand FISA requests. More like it could handle a quadrillion such "requests".
haberman 13y ago
> If they wanted the moral high ground, they should have sued years ago. Google has received high marks from the EFF for fighting for users' privacy rights in the courts and in congress for three years: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2012 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2012 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2011 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2011 This lawsuit is just a continuation of what they have already been doing for years.
- MarcScott 13y ago
  The EFF report was compiled prior to the Snowden revelations. There is no star rating for "Allowing warrantless access to a user's data in contravention to the 4th Amendment". I should think in the current climate only Lavabit would receive a positive rating from the EFF.

d4nt 13y ago

But this is the public debate that Snowdon called for. The leaks put pressure on tech companies to defend their reputation and when they do, each new development keeps the story going.

enraged_camel 13y ago
What public debate are you talking about? Look around you. Do you see anyone besides techies and the libertarian fringe talking about eternal and perpetual surveillance? I sure as hell don't.
- juzfoo 13y ago
  I just had a conference call with one of the clients on a project which he wanted to talk about. He wasnt very keen to share the docs on the google(he is into NDA and all that), but he was okay sharing that on Skype because skype is peer to peer. The point is everyone who matters enough knows about what was going on to make enough impact on the business of these tech companies. They may not be on the street demanding, but they are mulling over the consequences and alternatives regardless.
  - infinite8s 13y ago
    Except that he was misinformed. Skype started relaying through a central server after Microsoft purchased it and is no longer peer-to-peer.
    - ptwiggens 13y ago
      Skype specifically refuted that rumor after it came out. That being said, based on everything that has come out in Snowden's documents and other reporting, I now believe all Skype communications are compromised.
- javajosh 13y ago
  This, Hacker News, is public debate. Don't discount that just because it's not CNN or The New York Times. (Or because pg or his minions can edit/delete content at their whim, which has happened to me before). As time goes on the less and less reliable I find the media to be when gauging public sentiment. 90% of the people I've talked to about the NSA scandal, all across the political spectrum, have been horrified by the government's behavior. As depressed as I get watching the poor news coverage of the scandal, and the implication that people don't care about it, or are more concerned with "getting Snowden" than what he revealed, just simply talking to people makes me feel a lot better.

dylangs1030 13y ago

How do you know it's just PR theater, and that these companies aren't just trying to legitimately defend their reputation? You dismiss the entire story and claim that it's so obvious, but how can any of us know that right now? And, in the face of not knowing, why default to an explanation other than what has been given to us?

frenger 13y ago
"And, in the face of not knowing, why default to an explanation other than what has been given to us?" gut feeling based on existing evidence and experience.
jbjohns 13y ago
When it comes to security, your default position should always be one of extreme scepticism. Believing "what has been given to us" is what got us in this mess to begin with.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  I understand what you mean, but I'm not opposed to extreme skepticism. It's alternative explanations that seem contrived that I'm opposed to. There is a difference between extreme skepticism in the face of one story, and postulating hypothetical scenarios that have equal or higher burdens or proof, and are less likely or more difficult to demonstrate. In fact, in terms of logic, the two are diametrically opposed.
devx 13y ago
Well it's obviously both. Why are they fighting against it now and not before? Because they fear losing customers. So how do they win or keep the customers? With "PR battles" such as these. I'm sure they want to win these cases, but they wouldn't do this in complete secret, would they? They want the public to know about it, hoping this way it gets them to gain a tiny bit of trust back.
grandalf 13y ago
The time to file a lawsuit was years ago when the programs started. Google and Microsoft are now in the same category of privatized government "partners" as Halliburton and Lockheed. This goes beyond simple diffusion of responsibility, leaders at Google and Microsoft were complicit in the crimes the NSA committed and did nothing to stop them. IBM was able to eventually live down its involvement in the holocaust. In today's world there is no excuse for a modern tech company led by wealthy, enlightened people to commit these kinds of wrongs. Ironically, it's as if Google's mantra became "Be Evil". Such doings (empowering the NSA, IRS, etc. to snoop on innocent people for the express purpose of entrapping them or contriving other evidence) are pretty much the definition of exactly the kind of insidious evil that one would hope to be able to trust its service providers not to engage in. My prediction is that within a few months as viable open source alternatives for Google and Microsoft services become available, we'll see lots of people leaving their cloud platforms/services.

frank_boyd 13y ago

> Microsoft and Google are to sue the US government to win the right to reveal more information about official requests for user data. Totally irrelevant, because: We know for a fact that the NSA has installed hardware at all these companies (Microsoft/Skype, Google, Apple, Facebook, AOL, Paltalk, etc.). They don't need to put in any official requests for user data to get the data. Furthermore, we also know that 75% of all communication data is being intercepted/covered by the NSA (today! Work in progress...). Why would any official requests for user data be relevant, given these circumstances?

lutusp 13y ago
>> Microsoft and Google are to sue the US government to win the right to reveal more information about official requests for user data. > Totally irrelevant ... Irrelevant only to people who don't understand politics. The NSA isn't asking for cooperation from these companies because they actually need it, but because it provides political cover. In the * * itstorm that will surely result from future revelations of spying on U.S. citizens, the NSA can honestly say, "These companies cooperated in data collection." > Why would any official requests for user data be relevant, given these circumstances? As is often said, you may not care about politics, but politics cares about you.
MichaelGG 13y ago
Citation for "the NSA has installed hardware"? Google has explicitly denied this. If they've retracted that statement, I'd love to see it. The NSA has installed hardware on cables, but that's been known for nearly a decade. Intercepting unencrypted communications isn't much of a feat. It just takes some time and money.
- frank_boyd 13y ago
  Here's just 1 example regarding Microsoft and Skype: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c... > Another newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook email. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption." > Microsoft's co-operation was not limited to Outlook.com. An entry dated 8 April 2013 describes how the company worked "for many months" with the FBI – which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley on Prism – to allow Prism access without separate authorization to its cloud storage service SkyDrive. Would you honestly believe the NSA would want that from a company like Microsoft but not from a company like Google (whose main activity consists of the collection of data in order to build the most precise user profiles to advance the targeting of their ads = ROI)? The installations were also mentioned in the slides published by the Guardian, you should read all of them.

sixothree 13y ago

They would not be suing if they were expecting any sort of major defeat. It would destroy their reputation further. So yes, they have already consulted with the government on this. We should expect a very limited amount of carefully parsed information to be revealed as a result of this suit. Nothing more, nothing less.

costapopescu 13y ago

Exactly, its damage control. If they wanted to reveal more information about requests for user data, they could leak it anonymously.