
Setting the Record Straight - llambda
http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/52491403007/setting-the-record-straight
======
guelo
The NSA slides are highly damaging to American service providers, thus they
are trying to be as forceful as possible in these statements. There are
already European government officials calling for the discontinuation of
American services and for the development of European alternatives. Making the
matter worse is American official's arrogant short-sighted reassurances that
the surveillance is for foreigners only. As the NSA called it "our home-field
advantage", that these dominant global Internet companies are located here,
could quickly be lost thanks to the hubris of our government.

~~~
kiba
We should give foreigners rights that Americans enjoy. If American enjoys 4th
amendment protection, so can foreigners. That mean you can't spy on foreigner
without getting a warrant from an open court, rather than secret courts with
secret ruling.

Edit:

I am not arguing that foreigners should receive welfare check and benefit from
social programs. I am arguing that if they are targeted by the US government,
they should be subjected to the same protection. There should be no special
exception for anybody, because the special exception was used to justified the
NSA spying program.

~~~
maratd
> We should give foreigners rights that Americans enjoy.

Uhhh no. I pay taxes and uphold my civic responsibilities (jury duty,
selective service, etc.).

I earn those rights.

Unless those foreigners decide to become US citizens and take on the same
responsibilities, no, those rights do not extend to them.

~~~
opminion
Those foreigners usually have those responsibilities in their own countries.

The same works the other way around.

Wouldn't it make sense to have reciprocity so it ends up being a game of
citizen collaboration, rather than of competition (as in many other areas of
international diplomacy and law)?

~~~
maratd
> Wouldn't it make sense to have reciprocity so it ends up being a game of
> citizen collaboration

Yes, I'd be perfectly happy with that. In fact, I'd be thrilled to have the
same protections when travelling abroad. Unfortunately, most countries don't
provide such protections for even their own citizens.

------
dkulchenko
I'm struggling to make sense of all this. On the one hand, the denials from
the companies in question are becoming more and more genuine and convincing -
on the other, the NSA PowerPoint did leak which very clearly states the
companies' involvement and no one's thus far denied its validity.

Who's lying?

~~~
kahirsch
> no one's thus far denied its validity.

On Thursday, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, wrote "
_The Guardian_ and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of
communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies."[1]

Today, he released a fact sheet[2] which stated, among other things,

* PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a). This authority was created by the Congress and has been widely known and publicly discussed since its inception in 2008.

* Under Section 702 of FISA, the United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. In short, Section 702 facilitates the targeted acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning foreign targets located outside the United States under court oversight. Service providers supply information to the Government when they are lawfully required to do so.

* The Government cannot target anyone under the court-approved procedures for Section 702 collection unless there is an appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States. We cannot target even foreign persons overseas without a valid foreign intelligence purpose.

* In addition, Section 702 cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, or any other U.S. person, or to intentionally target any person known to be in the United States. Likewise, Section 702 cannot be used to target a person outside the United States if the purpose is to acquire information from a person inside the United States.

[1] [http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-
releases/191-pre...](http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-
releases/191-press-releases-2013/869-dni-statement-on-activities-authorized-
under-section-702-of-fisa)

[2]
[http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Facts%20on%20the%20Collec...](http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Facts%20on%20the%20Collection%20of%20Intelligence%20Pursuant%20to%20Section%20702.pdf)

For other statements from the DNI, see
[http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-
releases](http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases)

~~~
dkulchenko
I said no one's challenged the validity of the _PowerPoint_. What you're
quoting is challenging the articles written by the Guardian and the Post.

------
coolj
These companies are making themselves look really bad to anyone paying
attention. Nobody is reporting that they joined a program to volunteer illegal
access to user data, so these assurances are canards. What is being reported
is that the NSA has been running a secret program to legally collect user data
from these companies. If these companies want my respect, they need to admit
that these reports are true, declare their opinion against the practice, and
state their position on legal reform to make such practices illegal.

~~~
md224
Sincere question: was it not common knowledge that these companies would hand
over user data if compelled to do so by the government? What exactly is new
about this revelation?

~~~
coolj
I'm not sure how others feel, but for me the systematic nature and the scope
of collection are what get my hackles up. Requesting specific information on a
specific individual because of the suspicion that a crime has been committed
is perfectly reasonable. Collecting information on everyone in order to search
for illegal activity feels like a serious violation of privacy. We can debate
about the kind of information they can get through NSLs only being "metadata",
etc., but that's the crux of the issue for me.

~~~
cromwellian
There is no evidence they collect information on "everyone". Everyone has
denied the firehose feed hypothesis, even the NSA. Verizon didn't deny it,
proving that there's no gag order, nor did the NSA. So we have Verizon
admitting a metadata firehose, but everyone else denying it, which seems to
suggest the tech companies are telling the truth.

~~~
coolj
I hope so. But we have no insight into how much information was put in the
"locked mailboxes." From what we do know, it's reasonable to assume the NSA
has been gathering as much information on as many people as is/was legally
permissible.

------
nhangen
I still can't get past 'yahoo.tumblr.com'

Seems like a paradox. Mind blown.

Something about this feels like it carries more weight, probably because it
comes from the legal department and not from a CEO.

~~~
notatoad
i think the reason this statement feels like it carries more weight is that it
doesn't read like a mad libs where the CEO has filled in their company name in
the required blanks.

~~~
gohrt
Yahoo's is almost exactly the same as what Google posted.

------
fiatmoney
I don't care about whether a given company "volunteers information" (or has it
compelled), or whether it's via "lawful means" (which means, we got a secret
court order or an NSL for everyone). What I want to know is, of the N users
you serve in Country X, how many have had information turned over to a third
party?

If you qualify it as "any third party", I really doubt the proscriptions over
disclosing specific FISC or NSL orders apply. They do receive orders to turn
over information for all sorts of reasons, some of which are totally
legitimate.

Unless the number is "100%".

~~~
wycats
The word "infinitesimal" appears in this document.

~~~
fiatmoney
Many words, and no numbers.

------
evolve2k
Wow bet Yahoos glad they took a little longer than Facebook and Google to 'set
the record straight'.

This statement definitely carries much higher conviction language that related
statements, interesting to note the absence of Marissa Mayer from the
statements. I would guess that it just gives a little more PR distance in case
things blow up further.

------
quackerhacker
Lately all these PR statements from the companies involved are so carefully
structured that they can be interrpreted 2 clear ways.

1) Face Value. Don't look into the wording and just see that so many companies
"accused," are not involved.

2) Semantics. Look at the wording for hidden meanings, possibility of a gag
order, and these companies are (in reference to this article) involuntarily
involved.

I think they are general so the person reading it will take it as they want. I
posted a "what will you do now," post on here [0], because that's really what
this comes down to. I agree with most that I've ALWAYS assumed we were all
monitored, but as I've said many times....it's not what they know, it's what
they can prove in court (that's why I'm thankful CISPA got blocked...it was
kinda like legalizing what was already going on to be able to use what they
know in court).

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5842556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5842556)

~~~
lhl
For those interested, there is a dissection of Yahoo!'s statement by Chris
Soghoian (privacy and security research, policy expert/technologist @ the
ACLU): [http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2013/06/analyzing-yahoos-
prism-n...](http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2013/06/analyzing-yahoos-prism-non-
denial.html)

Like the other official/legal postings so far, the verbiage in this post is
carefully crafted to mean the opposite of what it says.

------
Father
All the organizations in question have a permanent smut on their record. The
angle I'm missing in this discussion is that this is a business opportunity
for something new and better. Acquiring new users for a search engine, social
network, etc was damn near impossible because you couldn't compete with the
resources, quality and brand. Now they have a flaw; privacy. Maybe the
homogeneous landscape of the tech industry can get shaken up. Kim Dotcom is
creating an anonymous email service and I'm curious to see what other
alternatives for common tech pops into existence in the wake of this.

Changing a government will take a lot of time; but a business outside the
reach of US legislation could pop up tomorrow.

------
outside1234
A clear statement. Thank you Yahoo!

