How America's Internet companies are handing over your data to Uncle Sam.
In the aftermath of the PRISM spying scandal, the first and logical response was an expected one: lie. The president did it, and so did the various companies implicated in the biggest US surveillance scandal ever exposed. To wit:
Zuckerberg: "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers."
Google CEO Larry Page: "We have not joined any program that would give the US government ÔÇô or any other government ÔÇô direct access to our servers."
Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."
One small problem: they are all lying.
The
NYT explains just how the explicit handover of private customer data from Corporate Server X to NSA Server Y takes place.
The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence.
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.
...
Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line between giving the government wholesale access to its servers to collect user data and giving them specific data in response to individual court orders. Each said it did not provide the government with full, indiscriminate access to its servers.
The companies said they do, however, comply with individual court orders, including under FISA. The negotiations, and the technical systems for sharing data with the government, fit in that category because they involve access to data under individual FISA requests. And in some cases, the data is transmitted to the government electronically, using a company's servers.
"The U.S. government does not have direct access or a "back door" to the information stored in our data centers," Google's chief executive, Larry Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement on Friday. "We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law." Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the same distinction.
But instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.
The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.
Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company.
And there you have it: backdoors, locked (and not so locked mailboxes), and internal corporate firewalls in which some employees know everything that is going on...
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Meanwhile in other news:Microsoft confirms Xbox One's phone home requirement.
The Kinect will not record or upload "simply having a conversation," Microsoft says, and it will not send data "such as videos, photos, facial expressions, heart rate, and more..."...
Got to wonder what "more" is.
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Nice comments:
CQLanik - Thu Jun 06, 2013 5:44 pm wrote:The very idea of owning an xbox one disgusts me.
shannim - Thu Jun 06, 2013 6:05 pm wrote:Everything else aside, isn't anybody else concerned that the Kinect has a heart rate detector???
Microsoft denies allegation it hired contractors to post positive Xbox One comments on social networks.
...According to an anonymous Reddit user, Microsoft is attempting to fight back by paying marketing specialists to make positive comments about the console, but Microsoft calls the claim untrue.
Reddit user "mistysilver" claims to have visited Microsoft's Remond, Wash., headquarters for a business meeting this week when members of the company's marketing team were busy voting up positive comments about the Xbox One and voting down negative comments.
"I noticed [a Microsoft employee or contractor] was mass-downvoting a ton of posts and comments, and he kept switching to other tabs to make posts and comments of his own," mistysilver wrote in a post on Reddit. "I couldn't make out exactly what he was posting, but I presumed he was doing RM (reputation management) and asked my boss about it later. According to my boss, MS have just brought in a huge sweep of [social media marketing] managers to handle reputation management for the Xbox One."...
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Yes, due to the fact that we upload pictures here, quoting will not contain the image because it is not a link but only the filename of it.