Google Facebook say they didn't know

[Horn6721]

from link'America's tech giants continued to deny any knowledge of a giant government surveillance programme called Prism, even as president Barack Obama confirmed the scheme's existence Friday.

With their credibility about privacy issues in sharp focus, all the technology companies said to be involved in the program issued remarkably similar statements.

In a blogpost titled 'What the…?' Google co-founder Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond said the "level of secrecy" around US surveillance procedures was undermining "freedoms we all cherish."

"First, we have not joined any program that would give the US government – or any other government – direct access to our servers. Indeed, the US government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called Prism until yesterday," they wrote.

"Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don't follow the correct process."

The Google executives said they were also "very surprised" to learn of the government order made to obtain data from Verizon, first disclosed by the Guardian. "Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false," they wrote.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, described the press reports about Prism as "outrageous". He insisted that the Facebook was not part of any program to give the US government direct access to its servers.

He said: "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 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. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of Prism before yesterday."

Zuckerberg also called for greater transparency. "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."

Yahoo said: "We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."
All the companies involved have now denied knowledge of the scheme to the Guardian.The Link

I guess the supporters are ok with this. The companies involves surely aren't
OR are they lying and knew all along?

Why would all tech companies all lie at the same time if this is all for the national good?

 

[hornpharmd]

your posts are so difficult to read. often cannot tell what is a quote and what are your words.

 

[Sangre Naranjada]

Do you have any thoughts about the meat of the issue, or is a cheap comment about his (admittedly less than crystal clear) posting style the sum total of your contribution today?

 

[Horn6721]

Pjarm?? do you know what quotation marks are? do you know what it means when you see them at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph or paragraphs?

Here, let me show you
from my op
from link
'America's tech giants continued to deny any knowledge of a giant government surveillance programme called Prism, even as president Barack Obama confirmed the scheme's existence Friday. "

See pharm it says from link which should be self explanatory
and then there are quotation marks

at the end there are closing Q marks and the link itself Then there is a double space before I post my remarks which have NO quotation marks


do you see quotation marks in my OP. both opening and closing?
is that too difficult a concept to grasp?

but let's say you didn't understand which was from the link and my personal. Are you saying you didn't understand the intent of the article?
Do you Pharm have any thoughts on the issue?

or do you as you usually do just want to snark?

 

[Horn6721]

Update to OP
NYT has article claiming that not only did Google and Facebook know about the gov't snooping program each company was to build separate portals. It will be interesting to see how Zuckerberg responds to this

from Link
"Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations.
In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said. "


more at link.The Link

 

[Bevo Incognito]

To much work to try to figure out original post.

 

[NJlonghorn]

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[Horn6721]

ND
thank you for the civil post
is it possible my posts look different?

If I make remarks at the beginning I double space down before I include quoted material and I typically say
from link
"

then I close the quotes and usually include the link, double space down if I want to add more personal remarks

the OP in quotes was longer than I usually post but I thought it was important. Perhaps the length of the quoted remarks confused people?

do the closed quote marks not show up?


is there not a double space down from the closed quotes before my personal remarks?

When I see open quotation marks I understand the writer is quoting someone else. When I see closed quote marks I know the quoted portion is finished.
Not to sound snarky but I am pretty sure that is the purpose of quotation marks.

what do you see?

 

[Sangre Naranjada]

There is a quote function on this board. It would help if you'd just use it.

 

[Hu_Fan]

One look at a few key slides... PRISM powerpoint slides

This is worth a read: NSA's truly appalling misdeed: bad powerpoint slides

-too many slides. 41 slides. too much for one sitting.
-too cluttered.
-too many words.. first two slides had 70 words. Rule is that first 10 slides no more than 40 words total (an often stated standard for effective communication)
-violates "cognitive backlog" -- overload of information; too much so that nothing can be processed

Bottom line: the slide presentation by itself demonstrates the lack of competence of a government agency -- that will have everything but your DNA stored in a data base for use. Mark this down: the government can't do anything well. NOTHING. Not a damn eff-ing thing. Nothing. NaDa. And I hope recent events are finally getting the point across. I can only speculate whetehr liberal progressives who were leaning on The State to manage our lives and be our caretaker will have finally had enough.

In the words of Game Day..."Not so fast my friend!"

This article gives the latest example of government incompetence. No incentive to be good at anything it does. That is not a partisan matter: that is why we do not need a trillion-dollar bloated government run by any party. (I'm thinking the Tea Party would make it so small you'd need a magnifying glass to find it).

On aother point.. I thought the war on terror was pretty much over. The shooting at Ft Hood was "workplace violence," the Boston Bombing need not use words that are attributed to anything with labels... getting out of Afghan theater by late next year. Why the need for all this surveillance? Why the need for America's version of Area 51 in Utah? Thought things were pretty much over. All wars come to an end.

But the problem with this kind of operation is how it will be used TOMORROW not TODAY. It cannot be taken back. It will only grow. Other administrations, other government employee brass will come into place. The past few years it has been the heavily Democratic National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) with 150,000 non-supervisory employees in over 31 separate government agencies, with 94% union political donations going to Senate and House democrats. That's now. That's today. And we see what the IRS has been doing -- they are staffed by NTEU employees. Again, a union heavily backing the democratic party.

How will all this be in ten to fifteen or twenty years? The line can always be moved to justify current needs. The bar can be raised, the net widened.

This is just the beginning. And what if some "rogue" sections don't really understand what the can or cannot do in the boundaries of information? This slide presentation has shown the inability to communicate in the very best way, and much of the IRS mess has been attributed to departments not being really clear on 501c(4) guidelines. What will they not be clear on PRISMs guidelines?

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[Hu_Fan]

I made that last post before listening to the interview with PRISM whistle-blower Snowden.

He voiced my views on the whole matter.

12 min interview with Edward Snowden

 

[Horn6721]

This is really silly
there are many many posts on this board that are long and hard to read. The OP was written correctly.

it is not surprising that the criticism about the format of the post itself is also silly but is correct.
The poster who first crittcized it has a history of snarking my posts since we couldn't be further apart ideologically. He rarely offers anything cogent on the topic.

Quotation marks are to any intelligent reader perfectly understandable.
I see some remedial instruction in grammar might be of use to Pharm and BI

I am done with this childishness