intslack

You're right, partly. Either way, NSA ha(d|s) direct access to Yahoo and Google's internal networks with MUSCULAR and various other WINDSTOP programs that have collected many more records than MUSCULAR, without requiring warrants whatsoever. Arguing over why The Guardian didn't retract is just splitting hairs at this point, because they did include the slide that claimed "direct collection from the servers." Then there's also UPSTREAM. PRISM is hardly the smoking gun in these long chain of events. And again you're right, I did mix up the 215 blurb.

Nice chat.

The two statements from The Guardian are referencing the documents themselves. If you want to talk about out of context, you missed the headline and the multiple paragraphs framing it as a question of what the providers say versus what the NSA documents say.

"Direct access," these are the NSA's own words. The Guardian ran the providers statements versus what the NSA documents said. That's a fact. That's why there are no retractions in The Guardian's story, and as Soghoian says they don't actually deny "direct access" in those statements, legally. What's likely is that the companies allow them to run informal searches to narrow the data down.

As for the "court order," they're just talking about a FISA court order which only "allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization," which they readily ignore, and it's more like a general warrant because NSA relies on self-reporting. As Snowden indicated, and LOVEINT showed, analysts can just use bullshit justifications and cover it up. And if they targetted a U.S. citizen, according to their own documents, it's "not a big deal."

Sorry for the wall of text, but I quoted verbatim from the book below.

>Wow, thanks for accusing me of being an NSA goon.

I didn't accuse you of being an NSA goon. Stewart is definitely one though.

> If there is evidence that the NSA has been handing Huawei source code to Cisco, or any kind of data to any private organization for that matter, in order to gain a competitive advantage, then Greenwald has yet to show it.

What does that have to do with anything? Why is NSA interested in “energy,” “trade,” and “oil” in the PRISM slides? Why is the NSA spying on “heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses.” Why are they “monitor[ing] the communications of senior European Union officials, foreign leaders including African heads of state and sometimes their family members, directors of United Nations and other relief programs [such as UNICEF], and officials overseeing oil and finance ministries.”

The answer is simple:

"When the United States uses the NSA to eavesdrop on the planning strategies of other countries during trade and economic talks, it can gain enormous advantage for American industry. In 2009, for example, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon wrote a letter to Keith Alexander, offering his “gratitude and congratulations for the outstanding signals intelligence support” that the State Department received regarding the Fifth Summit of the Americas, a conference devoted to negotiating economic accords. In the letter, Shannon specifically noted that the NSA’s surveillance provided the United States with negotiating advantages over the other parties."

It's economic espionage no matter how you spin it. When NSA believes it's pertinent to the "national interests" of the USA, not the "national security" they'll take it.

>You can consider Stewart Baker's opinion to be worth jack shit, but apparently Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Grim thought his opinion was good enough to quote extensively for the SEXINT article that they wrote.

Two quotes shooting himself in the foot by acknowledging and defending the program is hardly extensively quoting him.

>they omitted slides from the PRISM presentation in order to make the argument that the NSA had direct access to Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc.

That was the Gellman and the Washington post that claimed that, without question. The Guardian article framed it as a question. Greenwald never had to issue any retractions.

And just fyi, Gellman is still sticking to the direct access accusations. And Greenwald now thinks that he's right, because analysts can query without staff intervention at Google et al.

I'll quote verbatim from the book:

The companies listed on the PRISM slide denied allowing the NSA unlimited access to their servers. Facebook and Google, for instance, claimed that they only give the NSA information for which the agency has a warrant, and tried to depict PRISM as little more than a trivial technical detail: a slightly upgraded delivery system whereby the NSA receives data in a “lockbox” that the companies are legally compelled to provide.

But their argument is belied by numerous points. For one, we know that Yahoo! vigorously fought in court against the NSA’s efforts to force it to join PRISM—an unlikely effort if the program were simply a trivial change to a delivery system. (Yahoo!’s claims were rejected by the FISA court, and the company was ordered to participate in PRISM.) Second, the Washington Post’s Bart Gellman, after receiving heavy criticism for “overstating” the impact of PRISM, reinvestigated the program and confirmed that he stood by the Post’s central claim: “From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may ‘task’ the system”—that is, run a search—“and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company’s staff.”

Third, the Internet companies’ denials were phrased in evasive and legalistic fashion, often obfuscating more than clarifying. For instance, Facebook claimed not to provide “direct access,” while Google denied having created a “back door” for the NSA. But as Chris Soghoian, the ACLU’s tech expert, told Foreign Policy, these were highly technical terms of art denoting very specific means to get at information. The companies ultimately did not deny that they had worked with the NSA to set up a system through which the agency could directly access their customers’ data.

Finally, the NSA itself has repeatedly hailed PRISM for its unique collection capabilities and noted that the program has been vital for increasing surveillance. One NSA slide details PRISM’s special surveillance powers. Another details the wide range of communications that PRISM enables the NSA to access. And another NSA slide details how the PRISM program has steadily and substantially increased the agency’s collection. On its internal messaging boards, the Special Source Operation division frequently hails the massive collection value PRISM has provided. One message, from November 19, 2012, is entitled “PRISM Expands Impact: FY12 Metrics”.

Such congratulatory proclamations do not support the notion of PRISM as only a trivial technicality, and they give the lie to Silicon Valley’s denials of cooperation. Indeed, the New York Times, reporting on the PRISM program after Snowden’s revelations, described a slew of secret negotiations between the NSA and Silicon Valley about providing the agency with unfettered access to the companies’ systems. “When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled,” reported the Times. “In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.”

[...]

The Internet companies’ claim that they hand over to the NSA just the information that they are legally required to provide is also not particularly meaningful. That’s because the NSA only needs to obtain an individual warrant when it wants to specifically target a US person. No such special permission is required for the agency to obtain the communications data of any non-American on foreign soil, even when that person is communicating with Americans. Similarly, there is no check or limit on the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata, thanks to the government’s interpretation of the Patriot Act—an interpretation so broad that even the law’s original authors were shocked to learn how it was being used.

> I can see in the PDF file for Greenwald's book that he still extensively cites the Boundless Informant slides, despite the fact that they've been thoroughly discredited[3]

How is that? That has nothing to do with whether the US records are correct.

It's not going to interfere with anything: sponsored tiles aren't going to replace any of your newtab tiles (pinned or otherwise) in an old profile.

This is simply for new users and new profiles, to populate the newtab page with useful links until all of those items would be sufficiently populated.

Or you could click the button in the top-right hand corner of the newtab page to turn the tiles off completely (it also seems to disable thumbnailing now, you had to turn that off manually a few versions back.)

>Australis sealed the deal and made them nearly identical in the most critical ways.

How is that? Using the hamburger icon, which was used by Mozilla in mockups before Chrome used it, or rounded tabs (which Chrome doesn't actually use), or making the customization UI (something which Chrome doesn't have, yet again) not look like it's from the year 2000?

Please identify the critical ways in which it's imitating Chrome.

The most important aspects for me would be customization, and Chrome doesn't offer anything in the same ballpark. And with Chrome, you have to resort to tedious workarounds to install certain extensions if you don't want to login to your Google account. And if we ignore all of that, Firefox's add-on ecosystem wins too.

People get upset at every UI rehaul; you could hear much the same sentiment after Firefox 3.

History will judge Eich just fine. He's a great technologist, and the Open Web owes a huge debt to him. He's probably done more for equality and inclusiveness than anyone who protested his appointment.

That's the real tradgedy here: the world, and Mozilla, lost a great ally (for now.)

Phil Donahue is a nice example, I'll concede, but it says more about the corruption of the MSM than anything.

>Why should I give money to an organization who's going to turn around and give it to a guy who's going to use it to compare my friends to child molesters

Where's the evidence that Eich has compared your friends to child molesters? You have none. Eich reaffirmed his own stance on equality going forward, at issue is that he just didn't want to recant his support for Prop 8, for which he donated his own money on his own time.

I'm not going to dignify your bullshit with any further responses just based on that comment.