Comment by cromwellian
12 years ago
If they don't understand what's going on, wouldn't that argue in favor of doing more detailed research and analysis before writing claims? The original assumptions/claims in the Guardian story on PRISM are now shown to be false. This caused a lot of negative blowback on the companies involved.
Don't we expect our investigative journalists, to well, actually investigate things, instead of rushing to print?
As I understand it, there is nothing in this latest release which contradicts the previous PRISM stories. They are two separate programs.
In other words, NSA used court orders to access data with the knowledge (but gagging) of the companies (PRISM), while at the same time also hacking into the companies to access data without their knowledge (MUSCULAR). These things were both true.
How where they false? The PRISM program is real. There is a way for the NSA to automatically access Google's databases, with Google's knowledge under secret blanket (not case-by-case) court orders. They where clearly lying when they denied any "direct access".
No they weren't lying, as there is no evidence that Google had knowledge that the NSA had been tapping their dark fiber. What everyone assumed after the Guardian story was that Google had built some kind of firehose feed or portal for the NSA to just login and get whatever they wanted, never in any of those stories did they say the NSA was taking data against Google's knowledge or will.
For example, there was a famous slide showing when each company "joined the PRISM program", but the actual slide merely says "Dates when PRISM collection started for each provider". The reporter inserted the terminology "joined" which implies a partnership that didn't exist.
What these revelations reveal is that the NSA supplemented the data they got on a case-by-case basis through NSLs by outside-the-datacenter fiber taps of traffic, as well as upstream unencrypted HTTP and SMTP/IMAP traffic.
> What these revelations reveal is that the NSA supplemented the data they got on a case-by-case basis through NSLs by outside-the-datacenter fiber taps of traffic, as well as upstream unencrypted HTTP and SMTP/IMAP traffic.
Which still does not contradict the original speculation that Google provided bulk data for PRISM. We do not yet know enough of all the stories as to judge who spied or helped to spy on us in what extend. There are too many lies, too many secrets and far too little liability out there to let the big companies of the hook yet.
What claims in the Guardian PRISM story have been shown to be false?