[AsymetricCom]

Surprise: press has large effect on what people think was actually leaked. I'm sure 99% of those interviewed have no idea what he actually leaked entailed. I'd be more interested in a study that asked people if they knew what they were actually outraged about. A majority of the insinuations of the original "leak" have since been retracted and those actually following the details of the story have no belief that there is anything illegal going on.

Real opinion pieces that actually ask the hard questions like "should the government know less than Google" are all but ignored, in favor of 6 year old backdoor "zero-days", frontpage'd on HN, for applications that have been out of favor for even longer, or politically motivated 'stub' court cases that aren't expected to go anywhere. It has all the indications of a coordinated media event, not a real political scandal. Nobody really cares what's going on, we just care that there is popular support going forward. Popular support for what exactly? for general NSA outrage?

[discostrings]

> I'd be more interested in a study that asked people if they knew what they were actually outraged about.

To list a few reasons people are outraged: -Surveillance has been revealed that seems to far exceed what is authorized by the Patriot Act -The executive branch refuses to release the legal rationale on which it justifies the surveillance -Senior officials have lied to Congress about the scope of surveillance -Congress has not properly been briefed on these programs -There programs were kept secret unnecessarily -These programs are extremely dangerous to a free society -It appears this is a serious overreach in executive power, indicating a breakdown in the checks and balances of a functioning representative government

> A majority of the insinuations of the original "leak" have since been retracted

I don't know of any insinuations that have been retracted. The NSA slides say one thing, and the companies say another. There is still much to resolve.

> and those actually following the details of the story have no belief that there is anything illegal going on.

This is completely false. There seems to be a claimed legal basis for what's going on (which happens to be an extreme interpretation of the Patriot Act that even its author states goes beyond what it was written to authorize). But it hasn't been ruled on by a court because the executive branch claims it is too secret for judicial review. When that obstruction is removed, it's likely to be found unconstitutional.

Sure, people you interview might not be able to clearly express the reasons they're outraged. But there are at least three tiers of reasons to be concerned. Please consider reflecting on the fact that a claim of legality is not a claim that something is not terribly wrong and dangerous for society.

[res0nat0r]

Here is a summary of the Guardian story and what has been changed: http://www.zdnet.com/the-real-story-in-the-nsa-scandal-is-th...

"Updated June 10 to include a quote from a follow-up article in the Post directly contradicting its initial claims and another observation after the release of the leaker's identity."

[discostrings]

That's a summary of the Washington Post story and what was changed. It looks like the Washington Post reporting of this was a disaster. Not only did they initially publish language that was more sweeping than the Guardian, but they had absolutely no backbone and edited their story when companies said the NSA slides were wrong.

It seems the claims of the Guardian have not been edited, proven incorrect, or retracted. I haven't re-read their entire article, but it appears to be the same one that was initially published.

It appears that the exposé you linked eventually concludes: "According to a more precise description contained in a classified NSA inspector general’s report, also obtained by The Post, PRISM allows “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers." Looking at this from a process perspective and not a technical one, it appears there is little functional difference between this and "direct access" to servers. And it perfectly explains why the NSA presentation cut to the point: you get data from the company's systems without the company being involved.

It's up to the companies and the NSA to clarify things, but it appears the NSA slides are likely correct in terms of process, if not in technical terms.

[res0nat0r]

It looks like the Guardian is changing their story as of today: http://www.mediaite.com/online/fulsome-prism-blues-the-guard...

[discostrings]

That link is to a ridiculous "story". See my responses in the main thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5876943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5877115

[res0nat0r]

Oops that is the WaPo story you are right. Also the summary above sounds like the story that floated by on HN yesterday (hard to keep track since all this site is this week is NSA outrage), IE: data is sent via sftp to offsite servers by humans when complying with requests.

[skwirl]

In your first paragraph, you seem to assert that this program is as The Guardian reported (that is - essentially unfettered access to private data stored with tech companies). In your second paragraph, you seem to admit that we don't really know and there is more to be resolved.

Ultimately, I think you are talking past the person you are replying to. You are arguing that the program as reported by The Guardian (essentially unfettered access to personal data stored with tech companies) is horrible. He is arguing that the program is not what it is being made out to be, and the differences between what it is now popularly believed to be and what it is are tremendous. That is a more fundamental argument that would make the other argument moot if it is true.

See: https://medium.com/prism-truth/82a1791c94d3

[discostrings]

No--my points stand even on the basis of just the phone record collection.

The questions about Prism just add more to potentially be worried about.

[skwirl]

We're all going to need to be specific with what we're talking about or we really are talking past each other.

I think that right now the vast majority of the outrage here is over PRISM, although, if PRISM turns out to be a non-issue, I'm sure the outrage will simply migrate to the phone records issue.

[pvnick]

>A majority of the insinuations of the original "leak" have since been retracted

I don't think this is true at all. Glenn Greenwald is sticking to his guns, alluding to further revelations, and there has been no evidence contrary to his claims other than press releases by the companies in question.

I'm not sure where this "nothing to see here" idea on HN came from, but it's false and dishonest.

[burntsushi]

> Real opinion pieces that actually ask the hard questions like "should the government know less than Google" are all but ignored

Maybe most people on HN don't consider that a hard question? At the very least, I consider it an ill-stated question. I think something a little more transparent would be better: at what point must a company forfeit all knowledge to the government?

And when you put it that way, it really doesn't seem like a hard question to answer. At least, not for me.

[jstanley]

What would your answer be?

At what point do you think a company should be required to forfeit all knowledge to the government?

[tripzilch]

Let me guess, you're not trolling, you're "genuinely curious".

[burntsushi]

Never.

[dllthomas]

"should the government know less than Google[?]"

It's an interesting framing but I don't think a correct one.

To the question itself, in some areas the government should absolutely know less than other groups/individuals. My wife should know a lot more about me than the government does, and she does very little data mining.

To the framing, though, just as there's a tremendous difference between "follow that car" and "follow every car" (http://www.schneier.com/essay-109.html), there's a tremendous difference between "knowing what Google knows" and "knowing what Google knows plus what Facebook knows plus what Apple knows plus what Twitter knows plus what Verizon knows plus ...".

[malandrew]

Google mainly knows the things it tells it. Government should be the same. I tell the government about my taxes. They should know that because I gave them that information. I didn't give them my search information, so they should not have that without a court-approved search warrant. If they want my search history without one, they should ask me directly for it and I should have the right to deny them that information.

[dllthomas]

That's a pretty clear statement of "what," and I'm not at all sure I disagree, but can you get into "why"?

[malandrew]

Utility in the form of purchasing goods and services.

I give information to google because it provides me utility. They take my searches and everyone else's, aggregate them and sell that information to advertisers. That allows me to keep using Google for free. If the information were not in aggregate, I would opt for paying for search services because individual privacy has value to me. I also trust Google just enough to know that my information will be lumped in with everyone else's or that Google will provide a black box where advertisers can tell Google who they want to reach and Google will deliver the message without ever informing that advertiser of who I am. If I choose to reveal myself to that advertiser later, that's my prerogative.

With the government, I pay taxes because the taxes pay for a lot of services the government provides me with [0]. I get things like roads, civil servants, police, firehouses, education, etc.

I don't provide them with my personal info because doing so does not provide me with any utility. One could argue that providing them with my info via dragnet provides increased safety for me. The merits of this are arguable, but even then the merits are irrelevant to me because the utility I gain if any far outweigh my losses in terms of privacy, and even more importantly, outweigh the ability for society to progress if there 100% perfect and immediate prosecution of all crimes that would come out of perfect surveillance. My privacy and more importantly the privacy of my fellow Americans is worth far far more than the safety benefit of any dragnet.

[0] What bothers me with my taxes is that I can't perform a "vote" every time I file my taxes where I play "divide the dollar" with my taxes. I would love to be able to tell congress exactly how to spend my tax dollars. In my case, military and surveillance spending would get maybe 1-4% of my dollar, not the 33% currently spent on those activities. Voting for representatives is half the battle. Voting for how I let those representatives spend money is the other half.

[JacksonGariety]

My (very liberal) mother asked me today if I had read David Brooks' piece on Snowden.

I said I had and she told me that she agrees with the government surveillance and told me Snowden was a traitor to the American people.

I said, "You support PRISM?!"

She said, "What's PRISM?"

People have no idea. All they know is Snowden, Snowden, Snowden...

[Sven7]

I support PRISM and don't think Snowden is a traitor. Is that opinion acceptable?

PRISM can't be dismantled, for the same reason no one on the planet has figured out how to dismantle nuclear arsenals. The other guy is doing it too.

[devcpp]

This is not comparable at all. Nuclear arsenals cannot be dismantled because of the benefits of MAD and the other guy might be considered in a position of force.

In our case, PRISM can be dismantled without the other guy (i.e the population) retaliating in any way or any enemy country gaining any advantage out of that.

[Sven7]

It won't happen. Data today holds the same value as nukes during the cold war. A whole lot of intellectual and emotional evolution has to occur, across entire populations, before dismantling either becomes feasible.

I have a feeling this incident is going to start a big data arms race, mostly because, many governments in other country are going to start investing in their own NSA's.

The only thing that can control it, is the economics involved.

[EliRivers]

It won't happen. Data today holds the same value as nukes during the cold war

That is so true. Remember that last DPRK scare? "North Korea builds server farm" they screamed. Seems that any time the DPRK needs some attention, they just announce a test of their number-crunching machines.

[Sven7]

Lacking much imagination. DPRK don't need a server farm just a pen drive from St. Petersburg.

[Qantourisc]

Any opinion is acceptable, and in this case the 2 aren't mutually exclusive. Although "but the other guy is doing it too" sound like a bad excuse. This kind of thinking typically leads to escalation. So before using "the other..." better be very very sure it's worth it.

[Sven7]

Ofcourse it leads to escalation. What do you think the reaction outside the US to PRISM is? Are other governments, now that they know the extent to what the US is upto, going to reduce data collection and strengthen privacy laws?

Give me a break.

[jvictor118]

I support PRISM but thing Snowden committed a crime, specifically unauthorized disclosure of classified information, which falls under the umbrella colloquially known as "treason."

The latter is a matter of definition IMHO. But I applaud you for speaking out. It seems like the groupthink reigns on this one, and nobody seems to realize that they may have had a damn good reason for doing what they did. For example, if monitoring the Internet can avoid actual ground conflicts by early intervention, saving lives on both sides of the conflict -- is that really a bad thing?

[tripzilch]

Yes, actually.

I'm not an American. Which means that I am glad that there's finally some media outrage concerning privacy in general, because it was already public knowledge for months (with no leaks necessary) that the EU agreed the NSA could tap any EU-citizen's data in the US (or under the jurisdiction of).

For some reason this went by without barely a squeak[0].

In fact, a great many transgressions on our privacy (concerning both US and the EU and probably the World) went by without a squeak.

There is enough to be outraged about, even without knowing what this leak exactly entails. The important point is, it has the public's attention. And if the overwhelming majority of people are not okay with unlimited surveillance, isn't that a good thing? As you say, popular support going forward? It's about time, didn't you think?

[0] In the news media. Some organisations definitely took notice and adjusted their dependence on US data storage accordingly.

[sentenza]

By the way, the new EU data protection (i.e., privacy) directive is being written _right now_ and consumer representatives (or activists) report that there is a massive lobbying effort underway to weaken current privacy standards. Given the revelations of recent days, now might be a good time to support those that want a stronger data protection directive.

[tripzilch]

> now might be a good time to support those that want a stronger data protection directive.

I already donate to Bits of Freedom and the Dutch Pirate Party (actually I need to double check the latter) since quite a while, but I'm not sure how that directly helps an EU directive being written right now.

Any ideas? EU stuff is notoriously "far away" and hard to reach or affect (which is the one thing I really dislike about the EU, they silently passed some ridiculous things that would never fly in NL).

[throwaway420]

>> those actually following the details of the story have no belief that there is anything illegal going on

Just want to point out that this kind of thing being technically legal might be the scariest fact of all.

[jvictor118]

I'm a bit surprised that there are so few people who legitimately don't care at all. I actually don't care. I think it gives people a creepy, Orwellian-type feeling (because there were similar ideas in 1984) but the most significant part of 1984 was the totalitarian government itself. If covert methods are used to enforce the (possibly absurd) laws of a totalitarian regime, that's one thing; for the NSA to use covert methods to enforce our democratically produced laws and our collective desire for national security, that's something quite different. In the end, nothing they enforce relates to anything I do in my day to day life.

[nitrogen]

Did you not read the Verizon order? The order that very clearly demands a daily dump of all metadata (source/destination phone numbers, date/time, etc.) for all customers, even those calls wholly within the US?

[einhverfr]

Additionally it isn;t clear to me if cell site location data generated in order to be able to enable a call would fall under it. If it does, then the order turns our cell phones into Knotts-type tracking beepers.

[temp9251]

According to the Guardian article that broke the news, "[a] 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order."[1]

IANAL but it seems clear that cell site data could be included (since it's held to be transactional data), but it would be limited to the towers connected to when making and ending calls, not a complete timeline. [2]

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-record...

2. http://www.steptoe.com/assets/attachments/1948.pdf

[einhverfr]

The reading is hard. A careful reading could go either way. The fact is historical cell site location data could arguably fall under the order but does not necessarily.

The question in my mind is what is the purpose for the order. If it is to compel Verizon to do something they don't want to do, then maybe it wouldn't, but if it is to give Verizon cover for what they want to do anyway, then it very well might.

[stevewillows]

I think you have a point to pose the question regarding the major Internet companies knowing more about us than the government.

Are there any articles that have stuck out to you that you'd care to share?

[discostrings]

The government is a privileged actor that can do many harmful things to a person that a company cannot. The government has a monopoly on coercion, and it claims the sole right to deprive you of life, liberty, and property. For these powers not be abused, there must be real and serious limits on government power. Of course people and companies you enter into private agreements with should know more about what you share with them than the government should.

[jvictor118]

For better or worse, in 2013, the government is also a privileged actor that can _prevent_ harmful things. One of the ideas of government is that we trust them to protect us.

Thousands of years ago, you lived in your village with your sheep in pigs, and the local warlord would be responsible for watching the edge of the woods and defending you against invading Barbarian hordes. In return, you paid the warlord taxes.

If you believe you can protect yourself adequately from the global threats of nuclear war, extremism and terrorism, Chinese hackers and the rest, then anarchy is a form of government that might suit you well! And best yet, no taxes!

[stevewillows]

I completely agree. However, how can a group that owns coercion set the rules for their own agencies?

[discostrings]

The short answer is law. But even with a good system, it seems very difficult to maintain.

In the U.S., the idea was that its founding legal document, the Constitution, would put some very strict limits on the power of government. Thus, there would be many things the government could never do, like restrict one's freedom of speech or unreasonably search and seize a person's belongings or effects. A process was included to amend the Constitution in the future if that was ever necessary, but as one would expect, it takes a very large amount of agreement to do that.

Under these strict limits, three different branches of government would often work adversarially to keep one another in check. The Congress would make laws, but it had no power to enforce them. If the Congress was not happy with the execution of a law, they could repeal it. The President would execute the law and set up a system to enforce the law, but could not change the law and was not given the power to interpret the law or determine whether the law had been broken. The judiciary would interpret how the law applied to specific situations, determine whether law was being followed, and make sure new law complied with the country's ultimate law.

In theory, each branch doesn't have enough coercion to abuse it, and the other branches can stop the excess of a single branch.

It appears, however, that currently this isn't the case in the United States. The executive branch interprets the law to mean whatever it wants the law to mean. Then it claims "national security" at every attempt to subject those interpretations to judicial review. And it doesn't tell Congress its interpretation of the law or how it's carrying out the law. The Congress and judiciary aren't acting adversarially enough to restore the desired balance

Can this be prevented or corrected? Is it really a workable solution? I think we may be about to find out...

[stevewillows]

In essence we the people need to be Big Brother keeping an eye on the government while they spy on their siblings.

Ultimately the US needs a sustainable system where the people elected to power aren't bound by financial need which in-turn forces them to pass and enforce laws that aren't good for the greater purpose of the people. But while we're at it, I'd like a pony.

I'm in Canada, and we are in the same cycle of 'interpretation'. As with any major country we need to get back to the foundations and simplicity of our core laws that both protect the innocent and judge fairly on the guilty or suspicious.

In respect to transparency, we need a set of global laws that protect the users of systems based in foreign countries. If Canada had strict privacy laws, I would hope that I would be protected by those laws even if I'm using a service based in the US.

[jvictor118]

> In respect to transparency, we need a set of global laws that protect the users of systems based in foreign countries. If Canada had strict privacy laws, I would hope that I would be protected by those laws even if I'm using a service based in the US.

Do you also think that Canada's laws relating to freedom of speech would allow you to defame the Muslim prophet Mohammad on a service hosted in Jordan? The King of Jordan would disagree with you.

You can't begrudge sovereign nations the right to form their own laws and system of government. I smoke cigarettes. When I go to Montreal, I can't smoke near doorways. I don't demand that because I'm American I should get to smoke near your doorways. Your doorways, your rules. Same goes with servers.

> Ultimately the US needs a sustainable system where the people elected to power aren't bound by financial need which in-turn forces them to pass and enforce laws that aren't good for the greater purpose of the people.

What exactly are you talking about? Politicians are basically scumbags everywhere, but I don't see this as an endemic problem affecting the policy in our country... simply because the financial interests of lawmakers are highly diversified, and they also have an incentive to serve their constituency faithfully (re-election)?