
Mark Zuckerberg addresses PRISM - cbrsch
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100828955847631
======
dkulchenko
Look at the two writeups (Zuckerberg's and Page's) side by side. Each has 4
paragraphs. Each of the pairs of paragraphs addresses the same thing.

1st paragraph: we wanted to respond to these claims. 2nd paragraph: never
heard of PRISM, don't give direct access. 3rd paragraph: each request goes
through legal channels. 4th paragraph: encourage governments to be more
transparent.

Terrifying.

EDIT: It gets worse. Here's Apple: "We have never heard of PRISM. We do not
provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any
government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."

Here's Paltalk: "We have not heard of PRISM. Paltalk exercises extreme care to
protect and secure users’ data, only responding to court orders as required to
by law. Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to
its servers.”

Here's AOL: "We do not have any knowledge of the PRISM program. We do not
disclose user information to government agencies without a court order,
subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with
access to our servers."

And here's Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access to our
servers, systems, or network."

Microsoft refused to issue a direct denial of involvement in PRISM.

~~~
slg
The implication that there is some central figure behind this giving these
companies scripts to read meets the most common flaw of governmental
conspiracy theories. It requires the government to be simultaneously
incredibly competent and incompetent. If the NSA was able to keep this project
under wraps for so long with the number of people involved, I think they would
be smart enough to at least slightly alter the words of their puppets, after
all this is supposed to be the area of their expertise.

~~~
adventured
You're wrong, it does not require that they be incredibly competent, not in
the least.

It requires that they coordinated with the companies PR departments in the
process of setting up the program. The companies asked: what if the shit hits
the fan, or this comes out in the public, what do we say? And the government
had a simple, boilerplate answer for it.

You wouldn't even have to work with the PR dept, just one single person.
Either a special rep in PR for government matters, or just the CEO himself. It
would take 5 minutes to put together a generalized script for the CEO to
follow in the event this hit the public news.

This (the PR response) would be extraordinarily easy to coordinate, and it
would take just one conversation at the point the program was signed on to by
the companies.

And when this all became public, the company could also easily then call up
the US Government and ask them what to do (and more than likely, the NSA could
call them and tell them what to do).

~~~
slg
Let me be more clear. The part that requires competence is everything up to
the leak. Given the scope, keeping this quiet is no small task. It isn't just
keeping the people who know about this from talking. It is also preventing
other people from finding out. Depending the way they theoretically got this
data, that could stretch from keeping this hidden directly in the code base at
Facebook to hiding huge amounts of traffic emanating from Facebook's data
centers. Remember a lot of these tech companies helped recognize and locate
likely Chinese sponsored government hackers in the past. If someone is doing
something they aren't supposed to, a lot of people are going to find out about
it.

The part that requires incompetence is everything that has happened today. The
NSA's job is intelligence. They are the experts in connecting dots, reading
between the lines, seeing how random events might be a sign of something
bigger, and whatever other cliches you want to throw in here. Yet they are an
organization that doesn't know that having people reading from nearly
identical scripts will make people think they are reading from nearly
identically scripts?

~~~
adventured
It's not difficult to keep something quiet when the consequences are that you
violate national security and go to prison.

Senator Wyden has openly talked about how he wanted to say something about
these programs, and even now he can't reveal details of what's going on
because it would violate national security and he'd probably be put in prison
or at the least removed from Congress.

The overall fact that the NSA has been reading our email, tracking us on
Facebook, tapping our phones, etc. has not been kept quiet. Exact details are
far more difficult to come by, even now those are classified. The IRS was
talking about their right to read our email four years ago. The IRS has no
known infrastructure to pull that off, it's clear they were talking about NSA
or FBI programs.

As someone else noted, the government is very frequently both competent and
incompetent when performing tasks or running programs. There's nothing unusual
about that, you see it throughout the government bureaucracy. Sometimes they
pull off impressive feats that you only read about decades later, and other
times they're Nixon trying to cover up Watergate.

~~~
pyre

      | The IRS was talking about their right to read our
      | email four years ago. The IRS has no known
      | infrastructure to pull that off, it's clear they
      | were talking about NSA or FBI programs.
    

I seem to remember that this was about their ability to just walk up to Google
and request someone's emails without a warrant of any sort. There's no
implication that it _has_ to be related to some NSA or FBI program. Assuming
that the NSA has every email ever written in storage, I doubt that they would
coordinate with something as 'mundane' as IRS tax collection. They _are_ a spy
agency after all, and their purview is National Security.

------
frisco
I'm now just confused. If I understand it correctly, the government has
publicly acknowledged the program and tried to explain how it's "limited and
legal," but extant nonetheless. Now the companies are all uniformly denying
it. The options:

\- The companies are lying.

\- The government has infiltrated these companies and developed backdoor
access the executive team is unaware of.

\- The government is intercepting traffic en-route and doesn't need
cooperation of the companies.

\- The government is confused on their talking about about what they're
confirming here and PRISM has been misinterpreted by the press.

#1 is possible, but implies that there exists a National Security Letter-like
mechanism that can coerce this kind of public behavior. I find that unlikely
but certainly not impossible; that would definitely be a concerning outcome.

I think #2 is unlikely. There's an interesting passage in the original
Washington Post article, though, about how they want to be careful to protect
the identities of the cooperating companies so as to not "damage their
sources". A simple reading of this is that the companies might pull out if
they're publicly exposed as cooperating. However, since they appear capable of
coercing cooperating anyway, a slightly more tin-foil-hat reading is that
their access is less straightforward than asking Page and Zuckerberg for help.

#3 is probably happening regardless of whatever cooperation the companies are
providing. However, if that's the extent of PRISM I think it says interesting
things about the likelihood that RSA has fallen. Is that likely? I have no
idea. It wouldn't be unprecedented compared to what the NSA and its
predecessors have done historically, though. It's worth noting that the NSA
hasn't approved asymmetric crypto for protecting classified data.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_B_Cryptography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_B_Cryptography))

~~~
randallu
#3 doesn't necessarily require breaking RSA, just TLS (via fake certificates
or something else). Breaking RSA would be pretty interesting though.

~~~
qubitsam
SSL/TLS was broken once by breaking MD5. Now if the NSA can break SHA-1 using
its numerous known weaknesses (there's a working attack on SHA-1 with 2^52
operations), they can pull off internet-wide MITMing.

It's safe to assume the NSA can easily do way more than 2 petaflops, and they
have an exaflop goal, and that would be enough to run known attacks against
DES, factor 1024bit RSA moduli ... and if they can compromise just one root CA
(which uses 1024bit RSA) they can issue valid certifications of their own and
MITM everyone, and none would be the wiser.

And all of this assuming the NSA relies on publicly known weaknesses in
SSL/TLS. The matter of the fact is that they have very smart people with
access to unlimited resources researching new vulns and actively exploiting
them.

------
WestCoastJustin
I would like to believe these reports from Google [1] and Facebook [2], but
someone is not telling the truth.

There is evidence that directly contradicts their stories (i.e. _The Guardian
has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint
presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies
– which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the
capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the
servers" of major US service providers_. [3]).

Who are we to believe?

[1]
[http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2013/06/what.html](http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2013/06/what.html)

[2]
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100828955847631](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100828955847631)

[3] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-
giants-n...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-
data)

~~~
btilly
There is no contradiction if you accept the suggestion from
[http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001431.html](http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001431.html)
that the NSA got access to this information by planting moles at target
companies who then created back doors for the NSA to use.

This would be reasonably easy for the NSA to do, relatively hard for companies
to catch, and perfectly explains all published facts.

~~~
jlgreco
How are NSLs addressed? I assume to the CEO, but what if one was sent to a
departmental VP? Would that VP be permitted, by the NSL, to inform the CEO
that the letter had been received?

For that matter, who is the CEO authorized to tell if the CEO got the letter.
Obviously they have to be authorized to tell at least enough employees to
actually implement the demand.

~~~
btilly
Google's statement was strong enough to rule out the possibility that either
the CEO or chief legal counsel was aware of the existence of NSLs or warrants
that are nearly as broad as what Verizon received. Therefore, while they can't
say one way or the other whether they receive NSLs, it is a safe inference
that Google has not received broad NSLs.

~~~
jlgreco
Yeah, I'm wondering if _" someone down the chain in Gmail got NSL'd"_ is a
possibility or not. I'm not familiar with Google's org chart nor do I know if
NSLs are even flexible enough to accomplish such a thing.

If it _is_ possible though, there could perhaps be an NSL that covers "just
gmail" that is otherwise as broad as the Verizon one.

The notion that a CEO could be unaware of something like that happening is
incredibly disturbing though. I hope that is not possible.

~~~
benmmurphy
I assume they can but it would be a risky strategy. If google security found a
breach where customer data was being leaked then they might disclose publicly
before they can be informed that it is a national security issue.

~~~
jlgreco
I wonder if this could happen anyway in reverse.

I suppose though that whatever part of a NSL that authorizes the CEO to tell
developers to make it would likely also authorize the CEO to tell the security
guys not to sound alarms about it.. at least not without consulting senior
management first.

------
kjackson2012
It's so creepy how Zuckerberg and Page, as well as every other CEO's responses
are worded exactly the same. The same goes for Apple too. It's entirely not
believable that everyone's answers would sound so similar.

~~~
jhandl
I can't help but think that they agreed to word this so similarly as a way to
hint that the words have been put in their mouths. It's like what somebody
that's being held hostage would do to make you understand that they can't talk
freely.

~~~
ralfd
How should he phrased his FB post differently?

~~~
jlgreco
The question is not "how should" but rather "how could".

And the answer is _" a myriad of different phrasings could have expressed the
same content. English, even encumbered by lawyers, is like that."_.

------
fianchetto
> Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any
> other government direct access to our servers.

Amazing how all them, to a company, are using the "direct access" phrase.

Plausible deniability for the whole world to see along with the revelation of
the biggest spying operation in history.

~~~
jaydz
I agree, the funny thing is Obama already admitted the programs existence (WSJ
article).

~~~
aniket_ray
The WSJ article was about NSA requesting CDRs from Verizon. This is not the
same as having unrestricted access to private user data as the presentation
titled PRISM claims.

The strange thing is that just having a presentation is usually not enough for
the HN crowd. If it would have been, I would never have to execute on any of
my ideas beyond the presentation stage. Personally, I really don't think some
making a presentation is really evidence of anything.

I'm really not sure why HNers reacted differently in this instance though.

~~~
akiselev
Sorry, kind of have to throw "benefit of the doubt" out the window when
dealing with "massive state-wide surveillance programs that have no
transparent oversight."

------
pitchups
It is remarkable how similar the two statements from Larry Page (LP) and Mark
Zuckerberg (MZ) are below. The same responses worded slightly differently, and
expressed in the same order:

LP: "...we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or
any other government—direct access to our servers."

MZ: "..Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US
or any other government direct access to our servers."

LP: "... we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law."

MZ: "we... always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws."

LP: "...we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach."

MZ: "We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent..."

It almost looks like they are reading from a template or script!

~~~
drsintoma
Let's not rule out the possibility that Zuckerberg saw Page's statement and
sort of copy-pasted it.

------
jarcoal
These comments read just like the ones on the Larry Page thread!

It's almost like someone is telling HN readers what to say...

~~~
EGreg
There is a comment just like yours on the other page. Who are you? :P

------
SethMurphy
Amazing how much Zuck's PRISM response was like Page's. Almost like the same
people were telling them what to say.

~~~
fchollet
Every single official corporate response in this story so far was formulated
using the exact same terms, and did not constitute an actual, categorical
denial of the claims. We have not giving "direct access". We are providing the
government with our data through "legal channels".

~~~
ralfd
Like someone in the other thread about Pages blogpost asked: What could Zuck
say more to convince you otherwise?

He says explicitly Facebook is not providing information or metadata "in
bulk", which seems to contradict the Guardian article ("direct access").

~~~
wooster
He says:

    
    
      We have never received a blanket request or court order from 
      any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk
    

Not that they don't provide information in bulk. The next paragraph comes
closer:

    
    
      When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request
      carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes
      and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information 
      if is required by law.
    

Which in an ungenerous reading leaves plenty of wiggle room. eg, "When
governments ask", not "When governments order us".

Personally, I believe Larry and Zuck, but the statements themselves are really
weird.

------
brown9-2
1\. It would be nice if these statements defined "direct access to our
servers". It's safe to guess that they are using the narrowest definition
possible, meaning that a NSA employee can walk into the building that
Facebook's servers are hosted in and log in to any server and run arbitrary
commands. This is likely not what a layman's use of "direct access" would
mean. The issue is whether or not the government can access whatever user data
they wish provided the correct clearance or assertions.

2\. "We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday."

Somehow I doubt that the National Security Agency is in the habit of telling
companies that they work with the names they use for projects internally.

3\. "we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the
correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the
information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to
keep your information safe and secure."

This doesn't preclude the idea that the government accesses more Facebook user
data than the general public might realize under current law. Facebook can
provide large volumes of info as the PRISM slides suggest if it is indeed
lawful, _and this statement would not be a lie_. It hinges on what exactly is
"required by law", or more precisely, what is allowed under the current
interpretation of the law.

------
yid
Hmm, what I'd like to hear is tech CEOs say "the NSA does not have the private
key for our SSL certs." Beam splitters are a pretty cheap buy.

~~~
thomasvendetta
I wish the people who have knowledge of implementing these things would come
forward with a leak of some sort. Surely, somewhere their are citizens of this
type, right?

------
jpdoctor
> Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any
> other government _direct access_ to our servers.

> ...

> When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to
> make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws,
> and then only provide the information if is required by law.

So no back door at FB, because the front door is open to secret courts signing
the secret subpoenas to do secret things.

Got it.

------
themgt
Anyone find it interesting that "direct access to servers" keeps being
mentioned when PRISM could almost be an in-joke for the kind of beam-splitting
tech they were already using in Room 641A (and elsewhere) - i.e. they're not
touching servers, they're just siphoning off a perfect copy of all network
traffic

------
anthonycerra
I still find it suspicious that the previous White House press secretary,
Robert Gibbs, left the White House to work at Facebook.

I realize that statement implies that no one from government can go into the
private sector without it suddenly becoming a conspiracy theory, but in this
particular case the link is especially concerning.

------
cheald
It is _eerie_ how similarly worded Zuckerberg and Page's denials are.

------
nolok
> to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers

"to give the US, or any other government, or any third party intermediary,
direct or indirect access to our servers or our users' data"

I mean come on, I've never taken a single lesson in legal or PR and even I can
see the big huge holes. They insist on direct access, they insist on servers
rather than data and they insist on governments.

And that's not even taking into account the fact that most of those sentences
are the same copy pasted text that we saw in Larry Page's message. If you want
to make it sound like a personal message from the founder, maybe don't speak
like a drone ...

------
aantix
With the creepy similarities, why do I get the feeling that it's these
collective companies way of saying "Yes, they're monitoring you but we just
can't say anything..."

------
beatpanda
If I were covering this story my first move would be to figure out who wrote
the boilerplate version of the press release being used by all these tech
companies.

------
icodestuff
Reading between the lines:

> Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any
> other government direct access to our servers.

We have however set up a tap that mirrors all traffic to Facebook to NSA
servers, and we've given them the certificate to decrypt that traffic.

> We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government
> agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon
> reportedly received.

Instead, we were requested to provide our SSL certificate and to install some
hardware in our data center. We never handed over any data ourselves.

> And if we did, we would fight it aggressively.

Too much work to provide all that data. Best to just give them a mirrored PHY
stream.

> We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.

We didn't know _what_ the program was called; they never told us, specifically
for plausible deniability reasons.

> When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to
> make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws,
> and then only provide the information if is required by law.

Technically, they didn't ask for user data, they asked for a hardware
interconnect and a private key.

> We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and
> secure.

Our lawyers made us say this. C'mon, we're Facebook, what do you expect?

> We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all
> programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It's the only way to protect
> everyone's civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want
> over the long term.

Good God, what have we done?! We're under an NSL, can't you tell that,
people?!

------
taylorbuley
Note how similarly worded this response is to that posted by Larry Page:
[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html)

The cynic in me wants to believe the coincidence is because Facebook has
equally good lawyers as Google.

~~~
jlgreco
> _The cynic in me wants to believe the coincidence is because Facebook has
> equally good lawyers as Google._

The more cynical me wants to believe that Google has good lawyers and
Facebook's lawyers, although perhaps as good, find it easier to plagiarize. :P

------
CoryG89
I believe, without a doubt, that both the Zuck response and the Page response
were created from the same template or set of explanations. Unless all these
CEOs met up together and decided how they would respond, then this seems very
shady to me indeed.

------
ownagefool
Another possibility would be that PR works in fairly formulistic way. It might
not be an exact science, but if asked to comment on such a subject, and you
were innocent, I'm sure the following would be what you say:

> I have no idea what you're talking about. > We only give access when
> absolutely necessary within the confines of the law. > We're on our
> customers side.

Now some of the terms such as "direct access" are errily familiar, I'll give
you that but the message being conveyed and the order it's formed woudn't be
enough to suprised me on it's own and the guys working PR for these orgs are
probably pretty inbred. Still, it is interesting.

------
downandout
I have also been skeptical of the carefully worded releases, but looking at
the PRISM slides more carefully just now, nothing on them necessarily
indicates that the target companies actually know what is happening. Perhaps
PRISM is based on partnering with backbone providers to suck data straight off
the pipe, and the "Dates When PRISM Collection Began" refer to dates when they
completed software to scope out information specifically destined for or
leaving the services of each "provider".

This is just a possibility - I tend to believe the companies are simply lying.
But it is possible.

------
dbond
About this direct access phrase, I read a post earlier today (linked from a
comment on HN but can't find it now...) that described a hypothetical system
offered by facebook to intelligence agencies, this system would allow the user
to search for a person and then accept a EULA before being given access to
personal information. If this system were to automate the submission and
acceptance of a subpoena, would the system then be classed as having given
indirect access through the correct "legal channels"?

------
daniel-cussen
"Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard. Just ask. I have over
4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS." Asked how, he responds: "People just
submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me.' Dumb fucks."

[http://www.newser.com/story/88716/zuckerberg-once-mocked-
dum...](http://www.newser.com/story/88716/zuckerberg-once-mocked-dumb-users-
over-trust.html)

------
weakwire
ok now... how Twitter's CEO will respond with 140 chars?

~~~
asperous
Isn't all Twitter data public? They don't need to deny anything

~~~
camus
well , twitter doesnt publish your IP,your email or your social security
number everytime you tweet ... so no , all its data is not public.

~~~
Achshar
How would twitter have it's user's SSN?

~~~
camus
i was joking , my point is there are some data twitter has that could be
interesting for any administration. There was a case here in France where
people were making jokes about jews ( "un bon juif"), Anyway, the french
government asked for the ips of the people who made that joke , but Twitter
refused to give up user ips.

------
adrinavarro
The keyword for me here is "direct".

If PRISM is indeed a "prism", that is, a network-level dump, duplicate RAW of
data, then there is no direct access involved.

------
ianmcgowan
It does seem as though these companies are trying to signal something (a la
cryptonomicon), by the repeated emphasis on _direct_. That's the part that is
scary - as someone else pointed out, with the right SSL keys and a copy of the
bytes flowing thru a limited number of NAP's, you don't need your grubby
fingers in the google/facebook datacenters. The telcom's seem quite willing to
roll over...

------
bambax
> _... create the safe and free society we all want over the long term_

I don't think you can have both. Freedom has to be paid for, and the only
currency it'll take is blood. If we're unwilling to pay that price then I
guess we won't have freedom.

Also, I'm not sure I'd want freedom regulated by Facebook, where bare breast
in centuries old paintings are forbidden or jokes have to pass a censoring
committee.

------
homosaur
Why would you believe anything these guys have to say on this matter? For one,
the government has clearly given them some kind of deniability. For two, if
they were given orders under the National Security Letter program, they
couldn't admit they had knowledge even if they did.

I don't trust Zuckerberg, I don't trust Larry Page, hell, I wouldn't trust you
either if you had to respond.

------
kilroy123
Something fishy is going on... the same message, same exact words being used.

I'm thinking all these companies are legally being forced to give up data and
provide direct access to some kind of third party company, which in turn works
with the NSA.

It's pretty clear Google, facebook, apple, etc. can't just come out and say
they're doing this. They're choosing their words very carefully.

------
spydum
If you want to go full conspiracy theorist, you might suggest the slide deck
and capabilities were all a psy-ops tactic to persuade the real criminals to
abandon using google,Facebook,apple, and all of the big corps who refused to
freely hand over user data, and instead flee to smaller businesses that the
government could much more easily coerce into participating...

------
o0-0o
The fact is, when you sign an agreement with the government like this you are
given a 30+ page contract. Some items ALWAYS in the contract are:

1\. If you are asked about it, you will deny it, and LIE about it. They
actually tell you to lie. 2\. If you break the contract you will be destroyed,
and everyone you know will be destroyed.

Ask a senior member of the military how this stuff works.

------
EGreg
And the plot gets thicker: [http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/53475/white-house-
admits-it-has-...](http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/53475/white-house-admits-it-
has-access-facebook-google)

What to make of this in light of the companies' chorus of denials?

------
marban
Apple's response: We hadn't even heard of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and
Facebook before yesterday.

------
leoc
Hm. At this point I think I'd set better than 50% odds that the PRISM
Powerpoint is a fake. Which is not to say that there's nothing to it - there
could be all sorts of things behind it (the phrase 'modified limited hangout'
is one that springs to mind).

------
sdoowpilihp
I am sure that it's just a consequence of lawyers using their distinct brand
of wording that leads to every single one of these denials from various CEO's
and PR teams looking almost verbatim, but I do have to admit, the similarity
in wording is disconcerting.

------
alan_cx
Reads every much like google's statement. Heh, you'd think they had agreed it
before hand.

------
skaevola
[http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-
dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-
cut-agencys-cos,19753&#x2F);

~~~
mrwnmonm
The page you were looking for is not here.

------
brokentone
They're awfully precise about a limited set of things that did not happen.

------
joering2
> We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and
> secure.

Is it only me, or is Mark implying that agreeing on every government request
to provide data would make your information unsafe and insecure?

------
wangii
1, They got same press release template. 2, they all give govt indirect access
to the servers, e.g. ssh. 3, relax, we Chinese have had this since day 1. You
think govt can really outsmart determined people?

------
realize
If read the right way the responses could still allow for direct access to all
their users data through a special API. Direct access to the server itself
isn't necessary to get at all the data at will.

------
swartz
I really seems quite strange that the statement from both facebook and google
CEO's are almost exactly same thing. If i didn't know better, i would say same
person wrote them.

------
aviraldg
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. - George
Orwell

------
lispm
They are not allowed to tell anyone. So they tell a version which is totally
flawed, so that everyone understands that the opposite is actually true.

------
Myrmornis
Dear Mr Zuckerberg,

Feel free to deny your company's involvement, but don't you fucking dare
criticize the free press's reporting as "outrageous".

Thanks.

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bbwharris
Here's one: neither zuckerberg nor page posted those responses. The NSA did.

Once we all believe, the rabbit hole is an abyss.

------
nfm
"We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and
secure." \- ...Facebook

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mrwnmonm
if it was direct access, didn't the years here differ -
[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-
sl...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-slide-5.jpg)

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drchiu
Seriously. Anyone naive enough to believe that FB/Google/etc isn't involved?

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aayala
So the CEO knows every technical detail of the IT infrastructure? that's
awesome

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edouard1234567
Responses from Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg are suspiciously very similar...

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rwhitman
Again notice the words "direct access". What about indirect access?

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outside1234
are they playing with words? do they know about complete access to the network
just short of their data center but are saying that they are not providing it?

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suredo
A leak from one of the companies involved would be nice.

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rglover
This is a gun in the back response. Am I really supposed to believe the guy
with an open index of almost every American hasn't in some way folded to the
government. Ever?

Sorry, Z.

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washedup
Sounds exactly like Google's response

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mattbarrie
"direct"

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andyl
Facebook: "We do not provide any government organization with direct access"

Google: "the U.S. government does not have direct access"

Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access"

Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access"

The consistency is amazing - do they all use the same law firm?

Something stinks here.

~~~
onedev
When the government asks them for access to data, they provide it ONLY THROUGH
LEGAL MEANS ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS.

That's what they mean by not providing direct access.

The government can't just waltz into their front doors and just ask for the
data of all the users. Nor does the government have straight access to the
servers or databases.

Hope you understand now.

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fakeer
It's like:

John Doe asks, "Hey Larry, did you let Zuck read my mail I wrote you last
week?".

Larry says, "No! He doesn't have my password or yours, right?"

Joe persists and proves Zuck knows the contents of the email. Then Larry
shrugs and says, "Well, I didn't give him _access_ to your email, I gave him a
print out when he asked for it".

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CyberDroiD
I guess the question is: should governments have the same access as "social
media platform sysops"?

I would be surprised if they didn't.

