skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And it is such a tenuous argument. So, if I have some unlimited flat-fee plan, wherein the number of calls, who I am calling, etc. (i.e. the metadata) doesn't matter, then this information wouldn't be necessary for billing. In that case do I suddenly have an expectation of privacy?

I would really like for someone to provide a good answer to this question.
I don't think it is. Humans tend to instinctively "compromise" to a middle position. If you were to say, "this hacker must get between 2 and 40 years", you're much more likely (if I recall right?) to end up with them getting much more than the minimum.
Microsoft did directly deny being in a widescale program - it's here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jun13/06-06st...
https://www.google.com/dashboard provides an overview over your data at Google. Most/all of these services have permanent delete buttons.

It is possible to permanently erase or disable your search history from here: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/54067?hl=en

You can opt out of Google Analytics using this add-on: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Responses from Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg are suspiciously very similar...
Dissecting Big Tech's Denial of Involvement in NSA's PRISM Spying Program
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Sure: it seems possible that these statements are co-ordinated, but instead of being false or deceptive statements co-ordinated by a three-letter agency they're truthful or largely truthful statements co-ordinated by the tech companies' PR departments, and the close similarities are designed to amplify a message the companies agreed among themselves. Of course, under the circumstances the similarity looks suspicious, but it seems possible that could be an unintentional blunder rather than a genuine sign of guilt.
> I mean Apple only got added in 2011. If what you're saying is true then what does this date refer to?

Growing popularity and usage of icloud and apple's own messaging system? iirc, before icloud, Apple didn't have that much user data.
iMessage debuted in 2011.
Is the NSA PRISM Spying Program a Hoax?
So you understand there is more to our rights that just a document. They have to exist in a framework of judges and the executive branch.
Facebook: "We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers."

Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers"

AOL: "nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers."

Paltalk: "Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to its servers"

Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers"
A leak from one of the companies involved would be nice.
Or...you may be misinterpreting what's at issue. I can't claim to really know either, but from what I gather, the issue at hand is: Does the NSA have a direct feed into Google's servers, via PRISM?

Google says "No".

However, Google has not denied giving government access to user data: in fact, Google for a few years has been publishing a report of how many times governments ask it for user data:

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests&#x...;
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> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but you can admit to a gag order being placed on you.

At least sometimes that it is the case, though I don't know if it generally is.

If you have been authorized to have access to classified information, such as (if one accepts the authenticity of the presentation that the Guardian and WaPo have reported on) even the existence of PRISM, on the other hand, there are fairly substantial legal consequences to unauthorized divulgence of that information, and those consequences don't necessarily go away because someone else gave out the information first.
You're raining on someone's conspiracy parade, there.
Implicit confirmation that the programs described in the press are real and as described goes all of the way to Obama himself. For example he responded to a reporter today by saying, "With respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to U.S. citizens and it does not apply to people living in the United States."

If the programs were not as described, Obama would have certainly said so. Instead he confirmed their existence without disagreeing with what was said in the Washington Post about it.

Given that, there is good reason to believe the substance of the leak, even though we don't know who leaked it or exactly what is in that presentation.
possible the timeline on the slide is when NSA successfully began making sense of the raw data they could be collecting at internet backbones? also possible that the document purposefully threw the public off track by implicating these players, thus limiting the legitimacy of the claim if it ever came to light?
I'm no intelligence expert, but I'd be surprised if the NSA would expect something like this to find a "smoking gun" proving that person X is planning Y.

More likely you already have suspects, and your suspects have acquaintances , family etc.

You would be more interested in looking at these people, who do they network with on social media, what are they interested in?
Might they be knowingly or unknowingly be providing material support?

You would probably use this information to build up a broader profile and see which avenues are worth investigation.
I think he's talking about this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-oper...

and citing this http://blog.reddit.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-m...

where it shows:

Most addicted city (over 100k visits total)
Eglin Air Force Base, FL
It's not uncommon for an NDA to name specific individuals in company A which could use proprietary information from company B to add features which would be useful to B into company A's product.

The covered persons in A would be just enough to appropriate the necessary budget and deliver the features.

When the VP of Engineering or CEO asked, 'why did we add this particular feature, what's the use case?' the answer was, "If it's business critical that you need to know, we would need to document that and see if you can be added to an NDA."

"An NDA with who?"

"I can't say."

NSLs take this to an entirely different level. Page and Zuck don't have a clue. As soon as the databases were large enough to be useful, the data was in the hands of the NSA. That much should be taken for granted. The more important question has always been "if and how can it be used against you?"

With Obama claiming it's legal and approved by 3 branches, and how widely outside the NSA the data will be shared, the reality of "show me the man, I'll show you the crime" has never been truer.
This article was missing the instruction on how to use a notebook. I have searched for useful instruction for a technical professional use of a paper notebook with limite success. Any one care to help?
>The implication that there is some central figure behind this giving these companies scripts to read meets the most common flaw of governmental conspiracy theories. It requires the government to be simultaneously incredibly competent and incompetent.

Which is exactly what governments are.

Extreme resources, very smart people, and very idiot people, incompetent bureaucrats, messy cover-ups, all co-exist, all the time.

What did you thought they were? Incredibly competent XOR incredibly incompetent? (Only the first would be a conspiracy theory, whereas only the second would be gross underestimation).

>If the NSA was able to keep this project under wraps for so long with the number of people involved, I think they would be smart enough to at least slightly alter the words of their puppets, after all this is supposed to be the area of their expertise.

You've never seen badly (or too fast) done spin work?

Not to mention, why would the NSA care to spend too much effort to how those things were phrased?

If you think it matters, I'm afraid, you give the American public too much credit. It's not like it's gonna get suspicious by such small and peripheral signs. Listening to and accepting bad arguments, BS excuses, fake promises, and shit from politicians if what people are doing all their life.

And it's not even like they're gonna do anything about the core situation with regards to privacy. It's just the "hot topic" of the day, to be forgotten for some BS next week. You surely don't expect some kind of revolt of anything? If that was to be, it would have been at the other 20 similar media expositions or against the horrible laws that have been passed openly.
Hey all, I'm the developer behind Shortcat. Feel free to ask me questions or give me feedback! I'm on a short holiday at the moment so I might not be able to respond super quick.

If you do use the app and it crashes, please send a crash report and a short description what you were doing. It helps me a lot figuring out what the problem is. I post up known issues at https://trello.com/board/shortcat-bugs/51ac6a3711f6b34606001... (public Trello board) so people can vote and comment on issues.

I strongly suggest reading the README as I haven't baked in a tutorial to the app just yet.
This is why we need bitcoin
And the plot gets thicker: http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/53475/white-house-admits-it-has-...

What to make of this in light of the companies' chorus of denials?
> And a former Spanish official says the problem can be traced to a miscalculation — someone apparently put a decimal point in the wrong place

Sloppy reporting. Spain uses a decimal comma.
Great Idea, great execution, great name. I love it so far! Thanks a ton!
Internal Diseases of Big Companies
That would mean they've broken TLS which, whatever powers the NSA supposedly has, seems unlikely.

I don't think they would be intercepting SSL traffic either, because Google has a hard enough time legitimately updating their certificates [1] that I imagine if the government were doing it on a wide scale people would definitely notice.

[1]: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/changes-...
Performant is not an adjective. Performantly is not an adverb. Niether is a word. Use real words when you write. Maybe write, "It didn't work properly / perform adequately," instead of writing nonsense.
Valkee: shining light in ear cures SAD
No, they can't admit if there's a gag order in place by the NSA.
This. I imagine that an agency with the resources of the NSA could probably work out a couple of ways to obtain almost any private key they want.
He says:

We have never received a blanket request or court order from
any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk

Not that they don't provide information in bulk. The next paragraph comes closer:

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.

Which in an ungenerous reading leaves plenty of wiggle room. eg, "When governments ask", not "When governments order us".

Personally, I believe Larry and Zuck, but the statements themselves are really weird.
I think he's implicitly referring to American government codenames...

From http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/codenames.html#_C...

"Code Words are printed using all capital letters."
Let's not rule out the possibility that Zuckerberg saw Page's statement and sort of copy-pasted it.
Basically, yes - its been confirmed that they have a shit-ton of traffic to reddit from Eglin, and the rumor is the HBGary scandal is related to this as they do a lot of online "sentiment shaping" from there.
> And it is such a tenuous argument. So, if I have some unlimited flat-fee plan, wherein the number of calls, who I am calling, etc. (i.e. the metadata) doesn't matter

It is provided to the phone company for the purpose of them acting on it to provide service, and with the knowledge that they will routinely track it, whether or not it is related to billing.

> I would really like for someone to provide a good answer to this question.

That is the actual basis of the legal distinction, whether or not you think it is a "good answer". See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979).
I personally don't think it can be done - at least not without neglecting one or more of them. I always had my day job and my side projects. Once I had kids, I found, as you did - one had to give. It's like having 3 full time jobs, and I think you can really only handle two.

I was fortunate that my side project had done well enough that I could quit my day job. But there was still an exhausting year of overlap and I got a lot less sleep that year.
Of course they don't deny indirect because that would be a lie. Everyone provides data indirectly via a thing called "warrants". Google publishes how many indirect requests they comply with right here: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests
Let the Spin, Begin: Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg Read from the Same Script?
WaPost backtracks on claim tech companies ‘participate knowingly’ in PRISM data collection

http://thenextweb.com/us/2013/06/07/wapost-backtracks-on-cla...;
are they playing with words? do they know about complete access to the network just short of their data center but are saying that they are not providing it?
Reddit admits huge scale can be its own worst enemy - introduces "multireddits"
Why in the world CSS still hasn't supported double forward // slashes comment?
Sharing Is Hard: Legal Trouble for Airbnb, RelayRides, FlightCar
Zuck likely saw the Page stmt before he+lawyers finished theirs, so it's not at all necessary to jump from "doesn't seem independently formulated" to "therefore govt handlers probably gave them a PR formula".

Anyway, what difference does the origin of the statement make? The companies are either trying to deceive us, or they aren't. What matters is what's being done to us. We're all powerless here except to let politicians know we're unhappy, will vote against, fund EFF, etc. "Gotcha" parsing of official statements is not an important tool in this fight.

Personally I find ridiculous the notion that proud public figures will feel less ashamed technically not lying than actually bald-faced lying. Either way, you've sacrificed public credibility. So the whole discussion of "is this really a denial?" is uninteresting to me.
I never thought some technology standard could be lobbied by something like the NSA.

I mean most devs right now are doing web apps in JS, so obviously if you manage to restraint browsers from being able to do simple simple, raw p2p, you've won another battle against the making of a tech like bittorrent.

I so wish bittorrent inc could pick up on that... The web is not secure, but p2p networks are much more. Someone really have to make p2p networks more accessible and more functional for tech unsavvy people. Bittorrent sync already makes a great job at that, but that's not really enough, it's just files, not discussion groups or private messages.

Why not starting with just a anonymous p2p discussion system, without moderation or identification ? 4chan works that way, and they manage it pretty well, doesn't seem to bother many people. I emphasis on the without moderation or identification, because I guess there will be security flaws allowing to thwart messages.

Any reflexion on such systems ?
You're wrong on this one sadly.

If you receive a national security letter, you are not allowed to tell anyone (not your family, not your lawyer, not anyone).

If you break the life-long gag order, you go to jail for up to 5 years.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/nsl-gag-order-lifte...;

Hundreds of thousands of these have been issued, and the above story (about the owner of an ISP) is one of the few cases where someone fought back and won the right to speak about it.
V for Vendetta IRL.
No it wasn't strong enough.

All the companies ruled out is direct access (and Microsoft said is if there's a voluntary program, they're not part of it; they didn't rule out an involuntary program of course).

They did not rule out even something so simple as an API, or another party doing the work for the NSA (which the NSA then taps into, ala the Palantir concept).
Maybe we should start using decentralized technologies? Go back to bittorrent, tor, irc. Teach everybody to encrypt, the same way we teach them to wash their hands. And for similar reasons.
TorFone estimates 3-4 seconds of latency. Usable, but not practical.
Matt - Many of us believe that many of the people at Google are doing their best, however in this instance you're not doing the right thing.
While I enjoy my tinfoil hat, it seems that they're being open about the access given. This being said, if I didn't trust Google I wouldn't use them. I accept that I am trading certain information about me (interests, usage etc) for the bevvy of free services they provide.

What sort of information about me would the NSA be interested in?
Yeah, despite my suggestion in my other comment. This is great stuff.
If that was the case, then why are the CEO's putting their personal names on the line?

It's trivially simple for an expendable PR person or lawyer to go on the blog and make an "official" statement ghostwritten by the NSA/etc.

But that's not what happened. Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg posted using their accounts, and if it wasn't them, it was ghost written and borrowing their name and reputation (ie, they own it).

So, the CEO's are intentionally lying and intentionally attaching their names what could be the biggest lie they tell in some time.

Seems very stupid, why would they do that? Why not sacrifice a scapegoat? PR departments are full of useful scapegoats.

The Government forced them to reply personally to bolster credibility? But now we're back into the laughable conspiracy area again.

Or of course, they're telling the truth. For all we know, these companies reached out to each other, not the government, on the response.
Fixed link: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests
I completed 9 levels and decided to give it a rest.
React Tutorial rewritten in plain javascript
I actually had this idea before I came up with Shortcat. The problem was that there was no reliable way of linking an action to its keyboard shortcut without installing hooks into an application and tracing all the method calls and seeing which ones match up.

If you limited it to clicking the menus in the top where the shortcuts are defined, it's more doable but I personally didn't see much merit in that since I'm terrible at memorising keyboard shortcuts anyway.. :)
Other explanation, more in line with the reality of Spanish reality.

http://www.thelocal.es/20130520/530-million-bill-for-spains-...

> The president of the Navantia board has defended the work of the company's Cartagena shipyard and complained of "meddling" by unqualified people.

> He explained that it had been reported as far back as 2005 that the development process was not being properly followed and that there was a lot of necessary improvisation due to the addition of new elements at the request of the Ministry of Defence.
It seems to be fine here... anyone else having the problem? The /0 at the end of shortcatapp.com looks a bit odd...
Joss Whedon on Shakespeare, Female Superheroes, and Feminism
What is the source on the SSL keys? Arguably a lot of metadata could be gleaned without even decrypting the data. If an IP is tied to an identity, timing of traffic alone would be very revealing.
I don't have time at the moment to review the paper in detail,

But you have time to make multiple complaints about tptacek not knowing what he is talking about?

May I suggest you withdraw from this line of argument?
The asexual community has put a great deal of thought into how to define various kinds of attraction. For a starting place: http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Lexicon
"Ludicrous"?

Are you kidding me?

In any case of accidental exposure of a covert government operation involving many such parties, there would be instructions how to handle the media.

Those could be known in advance (at least for some cases), or they would get a call in case of emergency with instructions on what they are allowed to reveal and how to say it.

It's not different than what would happen at a multinational if there was some embarrassing incident related to one branch (e.g a costly in human lives accident). The legal/marketing team would reach to each branch pronto, with instructions what to say to the media. So, if the media get the manager of the, say, Canadian, branch, he would say more or less what the manager of the German branch would tell to his media.

The only "ludicrous" thing is your misplaced scepticism -- as if things thing isn't both obvious and something that's standard practice to media handling from entities of any scale...
I am reminded of the words of Lysander Spooner [1]:

"[T]he Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. ... But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain --- that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."

[1] http://lysanderspooner.org/node/64
The problem is that Obama himself has acknowledged the program both exists and is very active, the only limitation being 'Internet monitoring is only for those outside United States'- no comfort for Google users like myself outside the US[1].

I don't mind targeted surveillance against genuine suspected terrorists. What frightens me is broader intelligence collection especially commercial intelligence. Over time programs broaden and if we're not really, really careful we'll find gmail being read by intelligence analysts who can brief our US competitors.

If non-Americans can't trust Google with their information that is an existential risk to its future. I think the Google leadership needs to do a lot more than this one short post!

[1] From Obama's comments:
Now, with respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States. And again, in this instance, not only is Congress fully apprised of it, but what is also true is that the FISA Court has to authorize it.

So in summary, what you’ve got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress.

That seems pretty clear - there is a congress-approved spying on non-US citizens Internet and email.

EDIT: added Obama quote
This is extremely belated, but the NSA overload is making it impossible to find content. If you still have any invites I would appreciate it. My email is in my profile.
How to win. Get in the middle of the 0 and drill a small hole with your own missiles up through the 0. From now on you will be safe and most of your shots initially will hit an invader. Once you get down to the last one it is a matter of timing.

If they break through the 0 and you are in danger, move under another safer part and drill a hole again.
I'm not saying otherwise. But flaming the government for acting Unconstitutionally for activity that is not contrary to the text of the document is lame and misleading.

If you think there should be a right to privacy of electronic communications, then convince people of it. Get an amendment passe. Don't twist the Constitution to say what you wish it said.
They are not allowed to tell anyone. So they tell a version which is totally flawed, so that everyone understands that the opposite is actually true.
I'd say its more like Air to surface fusion missile. I guess information is power and anyone with modicum of information is more dangerous. Weird times.
Qualified statement "direct".
Of course they are not providing "direct" access to production servers. What about "copies"?