skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers.

> ...

> When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law.

So no back door at FB, because the front door is open to secret courts signing the secret subpoenas to do secret things.

Got it.
Yes, but how would they do this exactly? To collect anything valuable from Google they would need to MITM SSL on a large scale. And Chrome actually ships with a list of pinned certificates, including those for Google, making it difficult to MITM even for the government.
I did read it, with the dozens of other articles and such it's blurred together. He did rule out the US Government, does that rule out contractors? Does that rule out Verizon? What if Google has data in someone else' datacenter? That's specifically what they said the US government doesn't have direct access to.

Do they give carte blanch access to their data to ANYONE? Regardless of the datacenter. If they don't they can say that.
Is it just me or did the personal statements by Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg have similar format and language?
Clapper admits secret NSA surveillance program to access user data
Makes sense to me: they can't say the government has no access to their servers because, of course, the US courts could compel access to their servers. They're US companies.

But a running process or piece of hardware sitting in their DC sniffing traffic? No.

That's what I think they're saying, at any rate.

EDIT: One plausible explanation for why everyone keeps using the phrase "direct access" is because it appears in the Guardian story as the first sentence: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n...
well , twitter doesnt publish your IP,your email or your social security number everytime you tweet ... so no , all its data is not public.
Aren't IPOing companies almost universally profitable?
I'll share more about the product in two months when I start working on it full-time and can spend more time crafting the message I want, though it's quite tempting to do it now.

It seems to be just how I am, I don't think about it much. Though if I were a few hours north in Silicon Valley I'd likely spend more time socializing with like-minded people. Whether that'd be productive or not depends on the people (or me?) as it seems most meetups/conferences are a waste of time and most people really don't do anything, they just like thinking and talking about it. Unfortunately, wearing the jersey doesn't make you part of the team.

I really believe that you're the average of the people you spend the most time with, so I limit my time with people I don't look up to. Unfortunately, now the only practical way to spend time with people I look up to is by reading books and listening to Mixergy and other interviews and podcasts. But from that standpoint, I have an incredible circle of friends and mentors. There is so much information out there just waiting to be consumed and our brains have incredible plasticity, they change based on their diet.

If you subscribe to the idea that you're a representation of those you spend the most time with, I think that many forget that when you read and respond to comments on HN and other places, you're spending time with those people. Is it making you better? Avoiding extensive interaction with any one community limits group think and blinders. Homogeneity makes us think small without even realizing it, imagine sitting in a dark room with a candle vs. a light bulb.

I'm pretty hard on myself in terms of achievement, fitness, and productivity, but I've learned I can be hard on others (including my wife) and judgmental to an extent, so I try to avoid such situations. I've also learned that I'm hard on people because I care and I believe they're capable of more, something I've channeled into my current startup which essentially has the purpose of making businesses better.

I don't blog or use Twitter/Facebook/whatever much either, which saves a lot of time. I think this thread is an example. I rarely share my thoughts, but when I do explaining them is time consuming. I don't mind, but I do feel guilty that I'm not doing something else. It's smart to be ruthless with your time; it's really all you have.

As a single founder this sort of independence has really worked for me, but then again I guess we'll see what happens after a few years when I have some experience under my belt. I've learned so much about the startup world in the past year, but it always surprises me how much I still have to learn. Good thing I'm always hungry.
Hmm, what I'd like to hear is tech CEOs say "the NSA does not have the private key for our SSL certs." Beam splitters are a pretty cheap buy.
Oops, did everything in decimal. Good point and correction. Still, the difference in legibility and implications of the two lines of code are important. Modern compilers would optimize ((foo & 0x80) == 0x80) to (foo & 0x80) but leave ((foo & 0x60) == 0x60) alone because it is testing more than one bit.
Google could be searching email for certain series of characters, like "xxxx obama" and handing that over. Perhaps NSA supplies google a list of phrases to look for.
Could Zuckerberg's statement have been "inspired" by Google's? Did any other companies release similar statements?
>This was Congress legalizing warrantless wiretapping ala AT&T, but limiting it by requiring it to be targeted at non U.S. persons

But how would you determine on the internet that an account holder was a US person or not ?

If I claim to be the person X who is a US person by registering for an account in their name, am I then a US person and therefore supposedly exempt from monitoring? Even IP-based clues are not enough as those are not full-proof.

I suspect that both US persons can be just as susceptible to tracking from the Government.
Removed SAIC Job: Palantir Experience to Analyze Social Data (from NSA)
Bitcoin, like Tor, is essentially a honeypot for surveillance. Better to hide out in plain sight in my opinion.
Couldn't a huge amount of metadata be gleaned by just monitoring the size, disposition, and timing of encrypted traffic. That sort of information would only be useful to government and would give them the ability to deny everything.
I still find it suspicious that the previous White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, left the White House to work at Facebook.

I realize that statement implies that no one from government can go into the private sector without it suddenly becoming a conspiracy theory, but in this particular case the link is especially concerning.
I 100% agree; I don't see how anyone can ask for a more blatant and firm statement than that.
Exactly why is no company addressing the fact that the government already accepted the program's existence and the fact that they snoop emails/communications. How can the program exist and take data and these companies not giving the data at the same time? Other explanations include...

* Data is not, as everyone seems to keep saying, "direct access" and either first sent to NSA servers or a copy is sent periodically.

* Companies don't know and NSA is unlawfully getting data (unlikely).

* Companies are being forced to not talk about it and outright deny it.

* There is somehow a plausible deniability. The are not willingly giving up the data but they aren't stopping them from taking it either and just turning a blind eye to NSA's activities.
This is a pretty big topic, so I'll just offer this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_%28existentialism%29

Yes, you can say his ethics (such as they are) are consistent, but it's a weak form of ethics that do not govern one's actions.
each were prepared by the same law / PR firm ... ( dont know could be :) ), or even worse , it is a template written directly by your government("if you get caught , say that").

The sad truth is most people dont even care ...
There is no contradiction if you accept the suggestion from http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001431.html that the NSA got access to this information by planting moles at target companies who then created back doors for the NSA to use.

This would be reasonably easy for the NSA to do, relatively hard for companies to catch, and perfectly explains all published facts.
Told You So: If You've Been Using Centralized Comms Service, You Were Wiretapped
There is a comment just like yours on the other page. Who are you? :P
The old adage goes, "Don't mine for gold — sell pickaxes to the miners."

I guess the modern adaptation is, "Don't deal drugs — sell phones to the drug dealers."
This is a gun in the back response. Am I really supposed to believe the guy with an open index of almost every American hasn't in some way folded to the government. Ever?

Sorry, Z.
How about simple audits to make sure you're not keeping records? Your customers could even nominate a representative to be present during the audits.
I can't help but think that they agreed to word this so similarly as a way to hint that the words have been put in their mouths. It's like what somebody that's being held hostage would do to make you understand that they can't talk freely.
This is very artificial distinction - almost all your personal data and all "papers" is the data "about you". Treating email or medical record as public knowledge without expectation of privacy just because it uses technical means belonging to a third party makes no sense - why then phone calls are protected, they use third party equipment too and can be very easily listened to.
I imagine that he faces charges, not specifically for crimes committed to out the rapists, but possibly for a number of other illegal activities related to hacking.

That one of his deeds ended up resulting in outing bad people, does not mean that he is always so conscious or on the side of good.
In college, after we'd submit a programming assignment, our code was run through a program to test for plagiarism of another student's code. Can we run the same analysis on these announcements?
fetishising of an outdated vision

I think it makes sense. Still it is more interesting than just a kind of future-in-the-past exercise.
So, you are suggesting that the slides detailing their participation were simply made up?
I'd be curious to know if either Page or Zuckerberg met with Obama while he was in SV last night.
Thanks for making it! Computer security is a fascinating field that I've only begun to dive into recently.
hahahah perfect
> It also made it much easier for the government to piggyback on that tracking infrastructure we ourselves are building.

Not just easier: we made it possible.

The government couldn't have created Facebook on their own. But now that it exists, it's an intelligence agency's dream come true.
> The cynic in me wants to believe the coincidence is because Facebook has equally good lawyers as Google.

The more cynical me wants to believe that Google has good lawyers and Facebook's lawyers, although perhaps as good, find it easier to plagiarize. :P
https://encrypted.google.com/#q=site:news.ycombinator.com+le...

This has been asked over and over again. The last time I remember was 5 days ago. That's the best resource.
But if they were give similar court order terms as under the Verizon court order wouldn't he legally have to lie or violate the court order? Or just not give a comment, but no comment on this would implies guilt to a lot of people so lying could seem like the correct path.
Fun with Prolog: Priceonomics Puzzle
Ah, it's intentionally minimalist. That's cool too. Perhaps a small, unobtrusive link to about.scri.ch to explain the philosophy would be in order then.
It is remarkable how similar the two statements from Larry Page (LP) and Mark Zuckerberg (MZ) are below. The same responses worded slightly differently, and expressed in the same order:

LP: "...we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers."

MZ: "..Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers."

LP: "... we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law."

MZ: "we... always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws."

LP: "...we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach."

MZ: "We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent..."

It almost looks like they are reading from a template or script!
Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory
How would twitter have it's user's SSN?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqggW08BWO0

"400 billion Tweets and not one useful bit of data was ever transmitted"
No, the quote is still vague and I agree with Nelson69. He could easily say that "we don't provide any access to gov, nor to their subcontractors nor to any other entity,..." - if that would be true.
It's not just "journalists or bloggers" who do that; the government will often quote the maximum possible when discussing the case as well, in order to intimidate the defendant into a plea bargain.
To quote myself in another message,

> I've never taken a single lesson in legal or PR and even I can see the big huge holes. They insist on direct access, they insist on servers rather than data and they insist on governments.
Cutts said:

> push back on overly broad governmental requests

> publish our transparency report on governmental requests

and also mentioned Google 'fighting back' at National Security Letters.

The fact that courts have upheld secrecy between NSA and Google before (just the one we know about) is quite relevant.

There are bad things at play here and just because Google has a cute, colorful logo and hires nerds doesn't make them innocent either.
I believe, without a doubt, that both the Zuck response and the Page response were created from the same template or set of explanations. Unless all these CEOs met up together and decided how they would respond, then this seems very shady to me indeed.
I've posted this here before, but given recent news, it seems relevant.
Apple's response:
We hadn't even heard of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook before yesterday.
> Fuck, at least nobody killed rms.

Oh, that's probably partly because that wouldn't help its detractors any one bit: as a dead martyr, RMS would be more powerful than as a living bitter old figurehead. (Disclaimer: I know nothing about RMS' actual mood.)
Apple & the Mac Pro. Oh Please. Stun and Stagger Us
Kill Aaron, put kids in prison for dDOSing... but for god sakes, don't ever try to send a message to potential rapists! That would be oppressing men everywhere!
I'd imaging it'd get you a free one way ticket to Cuba, not charged.
This is the first thing I noticed. It really scares me as well. I put more of my trust in Google, and perhaps even Facebook then I place in the Gov. or the phone companies and others. However, these definitely look like they are created from the same template. Very worrying coming from Page and Zuckerberg like this at the exact same time. I just hope there really isn't a man behind the curtain pulling the strings of such powerful figures in technology today.
With an overlay you don't need a public IP to run a server. Look at Tor hidden services for example. Only the overlay "backbone" servers themselves need public IPs.

(I am actually opposed to overlays uber alles, partly because I think it may actually happen.)
I was referring to cryptographic attacks. Unlikely that they have such, but if anyone does, it's pretty likely to be them.
Something like this? http://churnalism.com&#x2F;
Democracy, liberty, privacy need at least a few percent of the population to invest a substantial amount of effort. If those few percent are missing the totalitarian state is unavoidable.
The biggest reason is, what is the downside? Working with US spy agencies as an american on american soil you don't risk getting thrown into jail for the rest of your life and the biggest downside is getting caught and fired but you are being compensated with money anyways so why would you care. Working with foreign governments is much more risky but I am sure they have tried and do have agents working in large companies such as google.
How are NSLs addressed? I assume to the CEO, but what if one was sent to a departmental VP? Would that VP be permitted, by the NSL, to inform the CEO that the letter had been received?

For that matter, who is the CEO authorized to tell if the CEO got the letter. Obviously they have to be authorized to tell at least enough employees to actually implement the demand.
"direct access to servers" looks suspicios to me as well. However, maybe several dozen lawyers had no clue how to react today, and they just copied one another's text?
It opens with "all of your duly elected officials have been aware of this program for years and have consistently voted to maintain it."

Yes, that makes it so much better.
The WSJ article was about NSA requesting CDRs from Verizon. This is not the same as having unrestricted access to private user data as the presentation titled PRISM claims.

The strange thing is that just having a presentation is usually not enough for the HN crowd. If it would have been, I would never have to execute on any of my ideas beyond the presentation stage. Personally, I really don't think some making a presentation is really evidence of anything.

I'm really not sure why HNers reacted differently in this instance though.
He can put his root CA into the browser, certainly when the browser is first installed, and perhaps with the next update. (Are automatic browser updates encrypted?)

But this is besides the point of in browser crypto. The interesting thing is, you need a reliable delivery platform for your crypto code, but this implies you have a TLS connection. So either a third party can break your TLS and modify the crypto code, or your connection is secure in the first place. The scenarios you are then dealing with, is that the server is potentially malicious, but a malicious server just serves broken crypto.

[Edit spelling]
It's not just using the phrase 'direct access'. Anyone with half a brain knows that all these CEOs could not have released this responses that are so exactly the same except for choice of words independently. There has to be some explanation, whether it is completely innocent, or otherwise, is the question for me.
Not too late. My only advice would be to have a very clear (and realistic) vision of what you want to do with it while, at the same time, being open to opportunities that you're not presently aware of.
The keyword for me here is "direct".

If PRISM is indeed a "prism", that is, a network-level dump, duplicate RAW of data, then there is no direct access involved.
No. I'm not saying that Page's assertion is true, but I am saying that it is a concrete assertion.

There's a difference between these two things:

1. Issuing a vague non-denial so that when the truth is revealed, you can claim that you didn't technically lie ("Hey, I never said I didn't molested him, I just said I never slept with him")

2. Issuing a denial that is proven later to be false.

I'm not arguing with the GP that Page is telling the truth, but that, as much as we can tell, Page has issued a statement that can satisfiably be shown to be true or false.
what license is this released under?
I think the concept of orientation is so simplistic that it is useless in any practical situation. The people that I am attracted to are women. That doesn't mean I am attracted to all women. It also doesn't mean that I would want to (or choose to) have sex with any particular woman, even ones I'm attracted to at any given time. It especially doesn't mean that a person's body is the only determinant in whether I am attracted to them!
It's hard to believe anything the government says about this because a month ago they would have denied anything was being done at all.
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5455525432/in/ph...;
PG made a post on Twitter about the Yahoo and Apple quotes being similar, but I initially thought it were probably due to the way the journalist asked the question. The similarity between these two does suggest something else is happening.

Many people are going to jump to the conclusion that it's because they were following the same broad script, but another possibility is that they want people to notice the similarities and become more upset about PRISM.
http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...;
How is a document that you never even had in your possession somehow your private information?

Have you been to a doctor? Have you seen that folder full of your medical information? Have you ever possessed it? Most likely not, but that is your private information and there are very strict rules about how it is handled and who can access its contents.
While you never know who's armed and who's not, in these cases they're probably just as worried about the destruction of evidence - a polite knock on the door and an 'excuse me, sir, we're the FBI' might give him time to erase or destroy something.
And now real IPv6 never gets debugged because everyone is using HE.net tunnels.
Analogizing to phone calls is a bad way to understand the 4th amendment because it's basically the product of a 1960's liberal court. It's a high watermark. It's law, but shouldn't be the only source you use to understand the meaning of the 4th amendment.[1]

The distinction between your papers and other peoples' papers about you is not an "artificial distinction." Where I think you're going astray is the use of the word "public." The 4th amendment doesn't protect all information that you wouldn't want made public. It's narrower than that. Say you visit a prostitute. She keeps a log of the date and length of each visit. That's obviously not "public" information. But it's also not one of your "papers" or "effects" because you neither generated that information nor are you in custody of it. It pertains to you, but you don't get to invoke privacy privileges over all information that pertains to you.

The same is true of bank records, credit card records, etc. When you entrust other people with your information, you can't invoke the 4th amendment to keep them from disclosing it, either voluntarily or pursuant to a subpoena.

[1] Also note that in the 1960's phones were analog devices with no storage capability. When you talk about things like e-mail, which go through intermediate servers and can be stored or copied by anybody in the chain, your reasonable expectation of privacy in that information is very different than what it might be for a 1960's style phone.
How does Rescuetime work?
I am learning programming and I am trying to figure out how Rescuetime has a client that can detect what programs are open and report them to a website.

If anyone has some explanations that would be great!
Kernel Log: Coming in Linux 3.10 (Part 1) - Networking
The management interface (Genesis) is GPLv3.
Taxi E-Hail Apps Get The Green Light In NYC Officially, Finally, Once Again
OpenGL commands sent over the network can be executed on the local graphics card via GLX.
What evidence have you got that Tor is a surveillance honeypot?
In this sentence, I would prefer Google to say: "First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government— OR ANY OTHER ENTITY - direct OR INDIRECT OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF access to our servers. [capitalized words are mine]
> I'm really not sure why HNers reacted differently in this instance though.

Because the government has admitted it.
If you turn the antenna off when not making a call, how would you be able to receive incoming calls?
In the article they specifically say it does.
AT&T gave feds access to all Web, phone traffic, ex-tech says (2007)