from Hacker News

NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies (2013)

by teawithcarl on 8/23/14, 10:56 AM with 40 comments

• by csandreasen on 8/23/14, 11:57 AM

  Moderators - Could you please add [2013] to the title?

  The article seems to mix up the PRISM and Upstream programs. For more information, I'd recommend either the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report of Section 702 collection[1] (VERY long) or this post from Top Level Communications analyzing the PRISM program[2] (much more accessible).

  [1] http://www.pclob.gov/All%20Documents/Report%20on%20the%20Sec...

  [2] http://electrospaces.blogspot.fr/2014/04/what-is-known-about...

  EDIT: corrected link

• by dredmorbius on 8/23/14, 12:30 PM

  1. The compensation is provided for in the surveillance state legislation which authorized unconstitutional surveillance of American residents, as well as unlimited surveillance of noncitizens outside the US. To that extent, the payments are no real surprise, to the small number of people who've paid attention to this fiasco from the beginning. Yes, awareness has grown post-Snowden.

  2. The payments are compensation for costs of complying with mandatory legal orders. To that extent, they likely aren't the reason why Internet companies are complying, but since they must, their costs are covered.

  Of course, they may also be full and willing participants, or could be getting dragged kicking and screaming into this. I've heard stories of varying levels of persuasion across the full spectrum.

  However both my points are mentioned clearly within the article, if not well articulated in the headline.

• by dan_bk on 8/23/14, 2:04 PM

  Remember all the "act-surprised-and-disgusted" posts of these involved companies, right after Snowden had started his revelations? Personally, I remember Zuckerberg's "What the F#ck" post very well.

• by mhurron on 8/23/14, 11:48 AM

  Can we stop pretending these companies were not complicit in these programs now?

• by digitalengineer on 8/23/14, 11:40 AM

  Thanks to mr Snowden we now all know the massive influence of the NSA and the way they can change/delete trends in the online media. HN is a big website with lots of influence (as is Reddit). Question: Has Ycombinator come forth with a statement they are not under the spell of the NSA?

• by sidcool on 8/23/14, 1:32 PM

  The article is from one year ago. Very relevant today, but an year old.

• by leoc on 8/23/14, 1:20 PM

  > Since the existence of the program was first revealed by the Guardian and the Washington Post on June 6, the companies have repeatedly denied all knowledge of it and insisted they only hand over user data in response to specific legal requests from the authorities.

  How is this statement anything other than a simple untruth on the part of the Guardian?

• by frostmatthew on 8/23/14, 1:34 PM

  When submitting old[er] content please include the year (2013 in this case) in the submission's title.

• by allegory on 8/23/14, 12:01 PM

  And that is why I host my own shit...

• by plicense on 8/23/14, 3:12 PM

  Lol seems they left out AMZN.

• by dougb on 8/23/14, 11:39 AM

  Old news from Aug 2013.