There's no proof to suggest they knew otherwise. Anything stated thus far is speculation. All that's been shown as "evidence" is a slide with company logos on it and some statements from the NSA which claims to collect "Facebook" data, which could really mean anything. Plus Google openly submitted a request to allow them to publicly disclose the number, type, and scope of NSLs it receives. I have more reason to doubt the Govt than these other companies.
Also, given the name "PRISM," isn't it pretty obvious how this program worked? Think about it... What does a prism do?
Meanwhile, Verizon and ATT have been completely silent and government representatives are making up new definitions for the term perjury.
They always seem to love clever acronyms that are tangentially related to whatever it deals with, like USAPATRIOT Act is actually about how to not be a good US patriot.
Again? We should never have trusted them in the first place. You should never trust anyone until they've proven themselves trustworthy, and trusting a company is just over the top.
The amount of trust we grant these people and companies in the first place may not be the root of the problems we're facing lately, but our collective naivete about other people's motivations and scruples has most certainly contributed to the lengths at which our rights and privacy can readily be violated by both the people we're throwing our data at and the governments that want access.
I mean, didn't he take someone else's idea and turn it into a billion-dollar company for himself while cutting them out? Multiple reasons not to trust him!
Wrong. They were accused of giving direct access to the government. They in fact aren't doing that. All they do is provide information when legally required to do so.
What exactly do you think Facebook and Google have done wrong?
From what I understand PRISM splits the fiber coming out of the companies implicated on it's way to the backbone. This does not require the knowledge of the companies implicated. Since it's actually splitting the light inside the fiber, PRISM is a cute name.
That is basically a continuation of the Room 641A concept.
There are a few problems with that theory when you consider that these companies are using SSL now. They cannot MiTM data from a beam splitter and we know they are not actively MiTM'ing traffic from a spliced cable with their own private key signed by a cooperating CA (doing this would be noticed quickly if they tried it en masse). If they have the companies private keys then they could be passively decrypting the traffic, unless DHE/ECDHE were being used. If that was the case then they would need the companies private key and the ability to do an active MiTM.
I don't doubt that they are doing something, but I don't think we have enough information yet to say what. Hopefully further releases will shed more light on this.
Add on top of that the PRISM program only costs $20m/year. There is just no way a massive nationwide clandestine fiber tap collecting data from companies moving petabytes a day between datacenters can cost a mere $20m/year.
The thing that is most frustrating about this leak is we only get 4 slides out of a 41 slide deck, and are left to fill the gaps with paranoid worst-case assumptions. And the Internet is a great echo chamber of paranoid assumptions.
Well, we also don't know if PRISM is piggybacking on another, possibly far more expensive system (the hypothetical hardware could already be in place, and under the budget of another far more expensive program).
Really, we just don't know. We don't know anything, except that it sure seems that something is going on. The documents are not getting the same treatment as the fabricated documents of a raving lunatic anonymous coward on Slashdot.
It seems fairly prudent to assume the worse case scenario, better safe than sorry, but it is important to not confuse that assumption with knowledge.
Dr. Charlie Miller, former NSA global network exploitation analyst, @0xcharlie: While I was at the NSA (2000-2005) we were told it was against the law to spy on Americans and if you did it you'd be terminated. In retrospect, it was going on even then. I'm not surprised the heads there lie to Americans, but I'm surprised they lied even to their own employees.
They realize the instant most people around the world realize storing stuff on "the cloud" is equivalent to forwarding a copy to the CIA, their business is SOL internationally.
Imagine if I was sending copies of everything (emails, internet uploads, photos, videos, skype recordings, aws server snapshots) to China's Ministry of State Security... I'd have the FBI at my doorstep in no time.
It's extraordinarily difficult not to be pessimistic when you see the abuses initiated by one party continued and expanded by the other, after bleating on about their supposed opposition to such programs.
I'm convinced that the Democratic Party is the biggest roadblock to accomplishing meaningful change in the US. It exemplifies the mushy, frightened middle in the worst possible way, and should be reviled by anyone with principles.
It's hard to see any difference between Democrats and Republicans at this point. The entire system needs to be thrown out.
I remember Ralph Nader was once asked why he is running for president when his candidacy might take away crucial votes from the Democrats and let the Republicans win; Wouldn't it be better if the lesser of two evils won? His answer: The difference between the Republics and Democrats is "the difference between Humpty and Dumpty".
At the time, I didn't agree with him. But when I see what's going on now; how the Obama administration is basically run by the CIA and US big business; then I have to think of this quote and how right he was.
Has any programmer ever disappeared after writing code that pokes fun / ire / controversy at the NSA? Has anyone in the US ever disappeared after something like this?
I guess we can imagine a new world where up is down and white is black, but in the current world, the government is just a bureaucracy filled with bureaucrats trying to get promoted for coming up with crazy ideas. Disappearing random people is not high on anyone's agenda, I don't think.
