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Google is part of PRISM and was (and probs still is) collaborating directly with the government.

imglorp 2304 days ago

Except for the 2013 "Oh shit" slide from the Snowden dump. At least part of Google wasn't on board.

That was MUSCULAR, not PRISM. It was to exceed the access that even PRISM gave them.

PRISM doesn't give the government additional access to anything. It simply ingests data that the FBI has already collected by wiretapping individuals under investigation.

Edit (responding too fast):

> It by default gives government access without anyone at Google or anywhere else granting that access at time of use.

Where did you get that idea? All the documents show that it ingests data the FBI already has, for individuals the companies already manually approved after potentially fighting about it with a judge. You simply made up an illegal system out of whole cloth that wouldn't last a minute in court if anybody challenged it, unlike the phone metadata program, which went through two courts to conclude its illegality.

Edit 2:

> Page five lists the companies and page six lists the per company agreement date. Unless you're trying to argue that Google didn't respond to wiretapping requests from the FBI at all before 2009.

The FBI has to set up a system for canonicalizing and routing data from each different company. Those dates list when the FBI did that for each company. Since almost nobody (including suspected terrorists, apparently) uses Apple's email service, their system was the lowest priority to support.

This is well documented, both in Snowden's documents and in documents the government later declassified. Once again, if PRISM were as you described it, it would be flagrantly illegal and shut down long before the phone metadata program.

Edit 3:

iMessage was launched near the end of 2011, and FBI's DITU handles content collection via wiretaps. When are you going to address the fact that the program from your fever dreams is insanely illegal and that it doesn't match any of the documents? If you would like me to respond normally, upvote my comments, so I don't get rate-limited.

It's automated systems for those requests. It by default gives government access without anyone at Google or anywhere else granting that access at time of use.

It does record the request though which is why NSA tried to exceed the bounds of that with MUSCULAR.

Edit to respond to your edit: Page five lists the companies and page six lists the per company agreement date. Unless you're trying to argue that Google didn't respond to wiretapping requests from the FBI at all before 2009.

Edit 2 since apparently this is how we're doing this:

> Since almost nobody (including suspected terrorists, apparently) uses Apple's email service, their system was the lowest priority to support.

There's a fuck ton of metadata that iMessage reports back up; PRISM isn't just about email. And yes, iPhones are the most common smartphone in the world. I guarantee you that Apple isn't last because they were a low priority, that's absolutely absurd.

Edit 3:

Your argument that "it would be illegal and shutdown like the other illegal programs documented here if it were actually illegal" has to be one of the hottest takes I've heard.

And the PRISM collection was part of what the Supreme Court dismissed not because it isn't illegal, but because you can't prove that affected the claimant personally without a breach to national security, so they can't prove they have standing, so the case had to be dismissed. https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/amnesty_v_clapper_scotus_o...

> they can't prove they have standing,

The plaintiffs in Clapper v Amnesty would have standing if the program worked as you described. No documents have ever been released saying the program works as you described, including the documents Snowden leaked after that case. If such docu6were released, the case would be relitigated. Here is an article describing how it actually works, linking to multiple sources: https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-...

> "it would be illegal and shutdown like the other illegal programs documented here if it were actually illegal"

How did one illegal program turn into multiple "illegal programs"? How do you come up with this stuff?

No, Google isn't part of PRISM. The FBI is part of PRISM. Google responds to court-ordered data requests, including from the FBI.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/pr...

The NSA's slides disagree with you.

The NSA's slides disagree with you. Here is the slide explaining how the data flows. https://imgur.com/setOJIm

PRISM is simply a data integration system that gets data from the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit, which is the group that handles Internet communication wiretaps on specific individuals under investigation.

> No, Google isn't part of PRISM.

The slides literally list Google as a data provider as part of the PRISM program.

If you paint with that broad brush, the users whose data PRISM consumes are also part of the PRISM program. That's a fairly useless definition. What people are interested when talking about PRISM is whom the NSA integrates with.

tpmx 2304 days ago

Nothing in those slides substantiates your claim.

The slides literally list Google as a data provider as part of the PRISM program.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googl...

tpmx 2304 days ago

No, they list Google as one of the PRISM data sources. It doesn't say if Google was breached or if Google volunteered.

Again: