from Hacker News

US tech giants knew of NSA data collection, agency's top lawyer insists

by tippytop on 3/19/14, 6:56 PM with 41 comments

• by magicalist on 3/19/14, 9:17 PM

  As davesean points out below, this isn't talking about fiber tapping and whatnot, this is talking about FISA orders

  > 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 the companies knew that they were receiving secret court orders to disclose data. Well, duh.

  Edit: he even says so explicitly:

  > “All 702 collection is pursuant to court directives, so they have to know,” De reiterated to the Guardian.

  Thanks for saving that for the last line. All the rest is just trying to connect dots they have no new evidence for.

• by gojomo on 3/19/14, 8:17 PM

  First, even if the companies did know, there was probably a tacit agreement with the NSA that the NSA would always allow them plausible deniability. "Not only are you doing your country a great (and legally-required) service, but everyone involved will go to their graves with the details. Have you heard about how [competitors/famous-companies X, Y, Z] have fully cooperated for decades? You haven't? Exactly."

  The NSA seems to have been forced by events to break that likely mutual-understanding.

  Second, what does it mean for a "company" to know something? What if one compartmentalized group of employees know – perhaps ex-military/intelligence people themselves – and believe they are both compelled to comply and to keep the full details from upper management (for everyone's protection)?

  Does that count as the "company" knowing? I could see the CEOs saying, as they have, "no", and the NSA saying, as they are here, "yes".

• by jrochkind1 on 3/19/14, 9:45 PM

  This caps off some pretty amazing reasoning.

  Earlier, the government insisted that simply collecting information in their databases was not a 4th ammendment violation, because the actual 'search' only occured when they _search_ the database, not when they collect and put in their database.

  (I think maybe they even defined 'collect' so it somehow only applied when they did a search, not when they actually collected?)

  Now they:

  > ...strongly rejected suggestions by the panel that a court authorise searches for Americans’ information inside the 702 databases. “If you have to go back to court every time you look at the information in your custody, you can imagine that would be quite burdensome,” deputy assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann told the board.

  > De argued that once the Fisa court permits the collection annually, analysts ought to be free to comb through it, and stated that there were sufficient privacy safeguards for Americans after collection and querying had occurred. “That information is at the government’s disposal to review in the first instance,” De said.

  Combine them both, and, well, you see where you get.

• by andyjohnson0 on 3/19/14, 7:10 PM

  If the companies knew about the data collection but were prevented from speaking about it due to being served with national security letters, does this admission change what they can talk about? And/or does it indirectly confirm the existence of NSLs?

• by linuxhansl on 3/20/14, 5:38 AM

  > “If you have to go back to court every time you look at the information in your custody, you can imagine that would be quite burdensome,” deputy assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann told the board.

  Come again...? So we're breaking the separation of the three powers because otherwise the authorities have to be inconvenienced with the "quite burdensome" task of "going back to court"? He can't be serious.

• by znowi on 3/19/14, 10:53 PM

  I suppose if at some point Larry Page himself confirms that they did know all about NSA surveillance and actively participated, people will still find ways to acquit the beloved company :) I'm not sure if it's the force of the "no evil" brand or maybe inherent dislike of the government, but user loyalty in PRISM companies is quite remarkable.

• by patrickg_zill on 3/20/14, 1:09 AM

  Sheryl Sandberg has received a lot of press coverage, most of it pretty positive, for her book "Lean In".

  As COO of Facebook, she must have known a great deal about what was going on... it would be very interesting for me, given her talk of leadership, if she were asked some questions about this....

• by dan_bk on 3/19/14, 8:41 PM

  Simply disgusting.

• by pktgen on 3/19/14, 9:28 PM

  Throwing the tech companies under the bus...

• by davesean on 3/19/14, 7:15 PM

  No one denied complying with 702 orders. The main contention about PRISM isn't that the entities receiving data requests knew that they were receiving these requests, the main contention was/is about the "direct access" allegations which is what these companies actually denied, that and knowing the government codename for the program.

  Bad reporting.

• by andyl on 3/19/14, 8:51 PM

  Of course they did (do). Just like telcos.

  What is amazing is the carelessness that the government shows w.r.t. protecting the interests of American tech firms. NSA could hardly have done more to destroy worldwide trust and credibility in our tech industry.

• by Fasebook on 3/19/14, 10:14 PM

  Ooops this universally installed and standardized language is universally installed and standardized, how did that happen?

• by Zigurd on 3/19/14, 9:09 PM

  Tl;dr: They ALL knew. They were ordered to comply. The denials are lies.