I've posted this for the nth time so I'm sorry to do so again...but...let's play the game of, "What if"...as in..."What if Google and Facebook did not cooperate with NSA's PRISM?"...what would you expect their denial statements to read like?
Let's say that it's reasonable that both Page and Zuckerburg would, in this hypothetical reality, have to meet with their lawyers and relevant managers to personally confirm that their companies have not been involved in PRISM, which would explain the time delay between yesterday's reports and today, and also, some of the formality in the language of both letters.
That said, both have made statements that, on the face of them, read like how I would expect a sincere denial to read like:
Page said:
> First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
Zuck said:
> Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.
OK, so the other argument that has been pitched (including by the OP) is that...Well, these statements sound too similar...Uh, OK, what is the litmus test for that? Let's say the police have arrested two brothers on the suspicion of murder, and both brothers say more or less the exact kind of denial: "I didn't do it, I was with my family that night, watching TV"...which is what you would expect them to say if they were actually innocent...but now, should these brothers be judged guilty on the possibility that their denials are both so strong and so similar that they must be in collusion?
The point has been raised that both Google and Facebook allude to the Verizon case, even though that is an entirely separate case. You might argue: Isn't it suspicious that they would take time in their terse messages to address that shitfest specifically? Sure...but on the other hand, can you blame them? Even many of the thoughtful HN readers have conflated the two incidents, so much that FB and Google both have to say, "Not only are we not part of PRISM, but we are definitely not as bad as Verizon, which exists on its own level of shit-storm".
Finally, there is one key thing that the alleged conspirators seem to be ignoring: so far, Google and Facebook are the only companies in which the CEOs have issued such forthright statements...where are the other ones listed in that leaked PowerPoint slide...including AOL, Yahoo, PalTalk, Apple, Microsoft? I know that the other companies have issued statements through PR people (here's Microsoft's http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jun13/06-06st...)...but that's not the same thing as what FB and Google have done, so far (and I apologize if I've missed the other CEO statements).
But I guess you can say "Well, the non-coordination of CEO statements is exactly what guilty companies would do to throw off suspicion"...which leaves us back to the same nowhere position we were before.
Does anyone remember the whole SOPA thing a year ago? From my recollection, the SOPA supporters (the big media companies) accused the anti-SOPA group of being Google's sheep because of how uniform the anti-SOPA rhetoric was...and of course, those who were in the anti-SOPA group argued that that uniformity is a necessary consequence of their principled solidarity.
So, the question remains...how exactly do we take a company or activist at their word? Or are we condemned to see only conspiracy if our preconceptions and biases suspect a conspiracy?
I've seen this attitude several times now and I simply do not understand it.
This is not "conspiracy". It would be unfair in the way you state if there was no evidence, and then these companies' denials was taken as evidence that they participated.
But that's not the situation. What we have is the US government saying (albeit unwillingly) that these companies are involved. It's not "conspiracy" to think that they are, in fact, involved, it's just obvious.
No, there is probably nothing these companies can say that will not look suspicious. That's not being unreasonable, that's simply looking at the evidence and realizing that the evidence against these companies outweighs their statements of denial.
We're just short of finding a guy with a bloody axe standing over the still-bleeding corpse of his victim, and you're complaining that nothing the murderer can say will clear his name. Well, yes.
> But that's not the situation. What we have is the US government saying (albeit unwillingly) that these companies are involved. It's not "conspiracy" to think that they are, in fact, involved, it's just obvious.
Hmmm...it's obvious, but only in the way that circular logic is obvious to the one in the circle...Your claim that the U.S. government is saying that these companies are involved is not what I've seen (though I admit I may not have read every article on this). What the U.S. government has said is:
1) The executive branch is allowed to conduct legislatively and judicially approved surveillance and some of this surveillance is in coordination with communication companies.
2) The recent reporting on the NSA has contained several inaccuracies
I haven't seen any tacit admission of PRISM. If you want to argue that the president admitted to the program by not outright denying it (in this press conference, for example: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/07/statem...)...well, that again is a questionable standard of judgment, and one that is vulnerable to false positives.
You don't have a smoking gun here. You have, so far, 4 PowerPoint slides of a heavily-redacted 41-slide presentation. You have the opinion of the career intelligence officer who leaked those slides. And you have the two strongly worded denials of Google and Facebook. Note: this does not mean that the companies aren't just outright lying, which is always still a possibility. But I'm saying, from what we know so far, what has been actually said is kind of what I would expect them to say if they were telling the truth (admittedly, I may not have a very creative mind).
They've said what you'd expect if they were telling the truth, sure. They've also said what you'd expect if they were lying. In other words, these statements provide no information. Given that, and the other evidence, it's reasonable to think that they are lying.
First off, the generator is awesome!
Second, (and i cannot remember who famously said this, sorry) the best description of any system is its results...
What does it matter whether they knew or did not know? The end result is the same, they are going to lose my (future) data!
