NSA General Counsel Insists US Companies Assisted In Data Collection

Related to yesterday's story about the NSA, Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes with this excerpt from The Guardian: "Rajesh De, the NSA general counsel, said all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under a 2008 surveillance law occurred with the knowledge of the companies – both for the internet collection program known as Prism and for the so-called 'upstream' collection of communications moving across the Internet. ... nearly all the companies listed as participating in the program – Yahoo, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL – claimed they did not know about a surveillance practice described as giving NSA vast access to their customers’ data. Some, like Apple, said they had 'never heard' the term Prism. De explained: 'Prism was an internal government term that as the result of leaks became the public term,' De said. 'Collection under this program was a compulsory legal process, that any recipient company would receive.'"

Comments

Of course they did!

[GodfatherofSoul]

The Feds kept the receipts!

When Apple said they'd never heard of Prism, they were using lawyer-speak to conflate not knowing the official program name with not knowing the program existed.

Re:Of course they did!

[Jane Q. Public]

Yes, exactly. But not just Apple, by any means. Apple, AT&T, Comcast, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

They've all been using Orwellian doublespeak, implying they had no knowledge at all by claiming they had no knowledge of a tiny, specific thing.

Traitors, the lot of them.

Let's all remember that treason is not disobeying your government, it is betraying your country and your people.

Re:Of course they did!

[gnasher719]

When Apple said they'd never heard of Prism, they were using lawyer-speak to conflate not knowing the official program name with not knowing the program existed.

People like you are the reason why the NSA is spreading this nonsense. To deflect any anger from themselves to these companies, like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple. Because they _know_ that there are plenty of fanboys who put all the blame on Apple, or put all the blame on Google, or on Microsoft, and then the other fanboys say that Apple is innocent and Google is evil, or Google is innocent and Apple is evil, and Microsoft is evil anyway, and everyone forgets about the NSA.

Fact is, the NSA are lying and spying scumbags. Fact is, there is no evidence that anyone supported them knowingly or willingly. The only indication that someone did is the word of the lying and spying scumbags.

Re:Of course they did!

[gstoddart]

The question is, which liars lies are the most believable? Is there a choice where they are all lying?

At least the ones who had threat of breaking secret Federal laws prohibiting them from telling the truth have an excuse.

Sure, they lied to us. But they'd been told by the feds that if they didn't, they'd be charged under secret laws and dropped into a deep, dark hole.

The people who got the ability, and subsequently used that ability, to force companies into collecting this information and lying to the public are the real criminals here.

If I lie to you while someone is holding a gun to my head, and I'm pretty sure they mean it, I had little choice. If I was the one holding the gun to your head and forcing you to lie ... well, I can hardly protest my innocence (which is what they're doing now).

Even if these companies did lie to us, it was under the direction of these people who are now acting as if the companies were complicit. When in reality, there was the legal equivalent of a gun pointed at their head.

The message is you can't trust either of them, and you should stop trusting them with your personal information -- because even if they don't want to be, they're not effectively arms of state security.

Which means you can bet that US based cloud services and the like will probably start to see losses of business around the world as people realize that they have no choice but to comply.

Under the PATRIOT Act, anything Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, or any other company in the US knows about you can and will be handed over to the feds if they demand it.

Re:Of course they did!

[Frobnicator]

To be fair, they were 'compulsory legal process', and almost certainly were accompanied by gag orders that have not been rescinded.

There are many kinds of domestic spying, referred to by their section of law. You've got 501, 1806, 1825, and 1845. All four can be used with gag orders. The ISP is basically forced to install hardware. They can chose to let the government do everything (and get paid for resources used), or install a tap themselves so the government can use it (and charge for resources used), or fight it (the tap still gets installed, but they don't get paid for resources used.)

Most of these come with gag orders: If you say anything, even hint that you might have known was was going on, and you risk violating the gag order.

There are very few business owners who have said anything about the process. Everyone should read Pete Ashdown's account. (He founded a major ISP in 1993, has run for senate, etc.) He describes receiving a FISA order, not being allowed to take notes or other details. Unlike most companies, he decided to isolate the customer's virtual machine to a single dedicated box, and then put the court-ordered recording box on that one specific box.

In the article he spends three paragraphs describing what the did, ending with "I can’t tell you all the details about it. I would love to tell you all the details, but I did get the gag order. I have probably told people too much. That was two years ago. If they want to come back and haunt me, fine.

When these executives are getting potentially a few dozen to a few hundred of these requests that include a gag order. None have revealed as much as Ashdown did in those few paragraphs, other than to say in corporate reports that they have received 0-999 such orders.

Re:Of course they did!

[Garridan]

And look at you, buying into the government's blame-shifting. This is the opposite of Nuremberg -- don't blame us, we were only giving orders! Blame the eeeevil companies that did the deed, not the innocent government who merely demanded compliance with threat of imprisonment or worse, fines!

Taking bets here..

[OzPeter]

The first rule of NSA data collection is that you don't mention NSA data collection or the NSA .. ever.

Unless you want to be tried by a secret court and end up somewhere you really don't want to be.

Re:Taking bets here..

[poetmatt]

What I find is hilarious is that "being forced to comply" is considered "assisting".

Apparently when your only choice is jail or compliance, somehow you're assisting in the process.

Re:Taking bets here..

[TubeSteak]

Apparently when your only choice is jail or compliance, somehow you're assisting in the process.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing."

This is why we have whistle blower laws.
It's why the Nuremberg Principles declare that 'just following orders' is not a defense when a moral option is possible (with the implication that its unpleasantness is irrelevant).

Re:Taking bets here..

[drinkypoo]

What I find is hilarious is that "being forced to comply" is considered "assisting".

Apparently when your only choice is jail or compliance, somehow you're assisting in the process.

If you choose between being a traitor and going to jail, and you choose being a traitor, you still deserve to be hanged from the neck until dead.

Meanwhile if they openly admitted it...

[bussdriver]

They likely would have been charged as traitors for admitting the whole thing... The legal agreement must say something about keeping silent and that would STILL be in effect to this day as long as the legal agreement is still active.

Weasel Words

[PineHall]

After the hearing, De added that service providers also know and receive legal compulsions surrounding NSA’s harvesting of communications data not from companies but directly in transit across the internet under 702 authority.

And

De and his administration colleagues were quick to answer the board that companies were aware of the government’s collection of data under 702, which Robert Litt, general counsel for the director of national intelligence, told the board was “one of the most valuable collection tools that we have.”

But what was not said was

Neither De nor any other US official discussed data taken from the internet under different legal authorities. Different documents Snowden disclosed, published by the Washington Post, indicated that NSA takes data as it transits between Yahoo and Google data centers, an activity reportedly conducted not under Section 702 but under a seminal executive order known as 12333.

So they did not lie but they did not tell the whole truth either.

Redirecting Attention?

[Mysticode]

This sounds like the NSA is trying to redirect some of the negative attention they have received from this elsewhere. Although that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true.

Obvious but not interesting.

[jedidiah]

Of course American companies cooperated. What exactly were they supposed to do?

"Nice company you've got there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it."

It would have been nice if someone would have shown some spine here. However, the fact that no one had the balls to stand up to the NSA really doesn't get them off the hook for anything.

Re:Obvious but not interesting.

[gstoddart]

It would have been nice if someone would have shown some spine here.

How do you know they didn't? Did some front-line tech guy say "no fucking way" only to be dragged off under a secret warrant?

However, the fact that no one had the balls to stand up to the NSA really doesn't get them off the hook for anything.

Indeed, I view this as the legal equivalent of saying that once you'd cocked the hammer on the gun and your rape victim stopped struggling she was a "voluntary participant".

"Why yes your honor, we did threaten the accused, but once he realized we might throw him off the roof he confessed" used to be the poisoned fruit, now it's Standard Procedure for the government agencies.

A government which works in secret and through intimidation under secret laws has ceased to be just, and will only get worse.

Re:Obvious but not interesting.

[Jawnn]

It would have been nice if someone would have shown some spine here. However, the fact that no one had the balls to stand up to the NSA really doesn't get them off the hook for anything.

I beg to differ... QWest did exactly that. Who's QWest, you say? Now, you're getting it.

We are entering a new era

[fustakrakich]

For once the NSA tells the truth! I never thought I'd see the day. Must be that "transparency" thing the president was talking about.

This is ridiculous

[the eric conspiracy]

1. It seems to me that the credibility of the NSA is such that I don't believe much if anything they say. As such I am going to disbelieve this until substantial evidence supporting it is presented.

2. Even if it is true, the fact that many NSA data gathering programs are accompanied by gag orders and other secrecy requirements there is no particular reason for me to believe that the cooperation of the companies was at all voluntary and they could disclose what was happening to my data without peril of extreme and secret legal penalties.

So all in all this is a completely ridiculous thing for him to say, and it has no particular utility for the general public even if it were absolutely true.

Yahoo CEO's term

[sl3xd]

Traitors, the lot of them.

Unfortunately, there are multiple ways of finding the 'traitor' here...

I seem to recall Yahoo's CEO saying something along the lines of "If I discuss government surveillance programs, I go to prison as a traitor; if I don't comply with them, I'm also a traitor." (obviously paraphrased)

So if you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't, I'd go with the one that doesn't involve a very public slam-dunk federal crime.

This is especially true with our current legislature (both houses, all parties), as well as multiple executives (both R and D), whom have voted to make the surveillance legal, and a Supreme Court that has also sided with the other two branches.

I can't really fault anyone faced with that decision.

The law as it currently stands may be horrible, but it is still the law, and the only way out is for voters to elect leaders who want to remove it.