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What do you mean by PRISM collaborators? I am genuinely curious because I feel like I missed when/where that was established. To my understanding, and please c

by infrec 13y ago

What do you mean by PRISM collaborators? I am genuinely curious because I feel like I missed when/where that was established. To my understanding, and please correct me if I am wrong, PRISM isn't a system that companies subscribe to, but more of a government portal for requesting information from a number of companies in a legal fashion. Is this not correct? I admit I have not kept up with all of the bits of information released due to the high volume of speculations generated by just about everyone that talks about it.

EthanHeilman 13y ago
We still don't really know what PRISM is or how it functions. It does appear that US companies did provide overly broad information to the US government using the following logic. 1. The US government gets massive amounts of information from these companies and can get this information in real time with no oversight, 2. none of these companies seem upset about it, which one imagines they would be if the US government was just stealing it without their permission, 3. and these companies have cooperated with the governments misinformation campaign (denials of "direct access" and such). If they aren't responsible for initially giving them access, they are now responsible the governments continuing access since they have learned that the government does have access and they have not attempted to prevent the government from maintaining access and furthermore they have aided the government ability to maintain access by stifling public outcry about this access by lying to their users.
- infrec 13y ago
  Your reasoning is not very convincing. Point one is pretty much the entire question so claiming it as proof seems circular. If you have evidence proving that claim I would be satisfied. Point two is simply wrong as there was a lot of writing from CEO's and engineers that seemed quite upset about the claims. And for point three, uh... what? How are their denials proven to be lies? Or are you implying that companies using the phrase "direct access" is proof? Honestly your post, combined with a lot of others' on this site, would seem to belong quite nicely in /r/circlejerk. I'm not saying that as an insult but rather how all of these speculations kept alive through echo genuinely come off as. If you have actual proof please provide a better reasoned argument.

by infrec 13y ago

EthanHeilman 13y ago

We still don't really know what PRISM is or how it functions. It does appear that US companies did provide overly broad information to the US government using the following logic. 1. The US government gets massive amounts of information from these companies and can get this information in real time with no oversight, 2. none of these companies seem upset about it, which one imagines they would be if the US government was just stealing it without their permission, 3. and these companies have cooperated with the governments misinformation campaign (denials of "direct access" and such). If they aren't responsible for initially giving them access, they are now responsible the governments continuing access since they have learned that the government does have access and they have not attempted to prevent the government from maintaining access and furthermore they have aided the government ability to maintain access by stifling public outcry about this access by lying to their users.

infrec 13y ago
Your reasoning is not very convincing. Point one is pretty much the entire question so claiming it as proof seems circular. If you have evidence proving that claim I would be satisfied. Point two is simply wrong as there was a lot of writing from CEO's and engineers that seemed quite upset about the claims. And for point three, uh... what? How are their denials proven to be lies? Or are you implying that companies using the phrase "direct access" is proof? Honestly your post, combined with a lot of others' on this site, would seem to belong quite nicely in /r/circlejerk. I'm not saying that as an insult but rather how all of these speculations kept alive through echo genuinely come off as. If you have actual proof please provide a better reasoned argument.