Slashdot Mirror
DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Google / NSA Partnership
SonicSpike writes "The Justice Department is defending the government's refusal to discuss — or even acknowledge the existence of — any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency. The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency. The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called 'Glomar' response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July."
China can neither confirm or deny that the U.S. contracting out almost all its intelligence work now to third-party private contractors like Google, Stratfor, etc. makes it a lot easier to steal classified intelligence and code from you dumb yankees.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." -Benito Mussolini
What we currently have is corporations acting as arms of the government, and government acting as an arm of corporations, to the point where they aren't very distinguishable.
I am officially gone from
The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called 'Glomar' response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist.
The NSA Representative then followed up that they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of the NSA as well. The reporters counter question was, "So you're saying that there may, or may not be an arrangement between Google and an agency that may or may not exist?" To which the NSA representative simply replied, "I'm not saying anything." And then promptly morphed into a bubble which shrank out of existence over a three second period of time and vanished with a small pop.
Occasionally, when in the name of security, someone says "we can neither confirm nor deny x", x isn't happening (for whatever value of "happening" is appropriate to x). In this case, given the US attitude to jurisdiction the reality may be quite simple. Any data or communications processed on or passed through any system that is owned, operated, managed or otherwise controlled by any US entity or subsidiary thereof may be arbitrarily hoovered up by the NSA or other similar agencies. They will then analyse it however they wish for whatever purpose they want. This can happen regardless of what connections are known to exist between the US authorities and any individual provider. Attempting to discover the scope and extent of those connections may thus be a pointless exercise. The same thing probably happens in many other countries too.
The problem is if you want to know something about X one thing you do these days is a Google search about X, followed by clicking on links in the results. If you are afraid Google is tracking your search queries maybe you will use DuckDuckGo or go to some other website. Whatever, when you get to the web site on X there is a fair chance the web site will have embedded in it HTTP connections to doubleclick.net, google-analytics.com, googlesyndication.com, googleadservices.com or the Google API like apis.google.com/js/plusone.js.
You don't actually need to post anything about X, or tell anyone about X, you just need to leave bread crumbs scattered about the Internet showing you have interest in X, and Google will know.
All the bread crumbs Google tracks would, no doubt, be extremely interesting to any intelligence agency.
@de_machina
In fairness to Google and the NSA, it's possible for them to be involved on projects together that *don't* involve assembly of a complete dossier of every citizen alive today, with realtime updates.
There are lots of people around the world - many of whom even live outside the US! - who might view Google's systems as an attractive (and critical) piece of infrastructure that would be valuable to penetrate; the NSA is tasked with monitoring and collecting foreign signal intelligence and other communications... it's entirely possible that their collaboration involves detecting, monitoring, and responding to foreign threats, even the establishment and monitoring of honeypots and the like, the existence of which would be confirmed by documents detailing the relationship. This would serve to tip off the organizations trying to penetrate Google's systems, and they could adapt and circumvent the monitoring Google & the NSA have put in place. Being able to monitor these penetration attempts lets the NSA collect data on the methods & capabilities of other intelligence agencies.
There ARE possibilities that don't require careful application of tin foil to your cranium. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be prudent with the use of Google's services, but a collaboration between Google and the NSA *need not* be solely for evil purposes.
So Alex Jones was actually correct when he said facebook and google were working with the government? Every time I heard him say that I was like, "Yeah sure alex." Wow. That blows my mind.
You're assuming it's true. Look closely at what happened: The NSA "could neither confirm nor deny" anything -- which is what they always say about everything. It's the stock spy agency answer to everything, because any alternative is an information leak. They can't even deny the rumors that are totally false. Because if false rumors get denied and true rumors all get "refuse to confirm" then you can obviously tell when a rumor is true. So instead, whether it's true or false, they always refuse to confirm or deny everything.
And then you throw in things like the spy agencies having developed some of the satellite technology which is used for Google Earth and you've got a bunch of conspiracy theorists running around speculating about nonsense.