[governance] FW: [IP] Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program - NYTimes.com

Sat Jun 8 08:51:33 EDT 2013

And for another perspective on the issue
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22808872

Deirdre

On 8 June 2013 08:00, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Farber [mailto:dave at farber.net]
> Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2013 7:30 AM
> To: ip
> Subject: [IP] Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program - NYTimes.com
>
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-bristling-conced
>
> e-to-government-surveillance-efforts.html?ref=global-home&_r=0&pagewanted=al
> l&pagewanted=print
>
> Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program
>
> SAN FRANCISCO - When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand
> easier ways for the world's largest Internet companies to turn over user
> data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In
> the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.
>
> Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies
> were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They
> opened discussions with national security officials about developing
> technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data
> of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. And in some
> cases, they changed their computer systems to do so.
>
> The negotiations shed a light on how Internet companies, increasingly at
> the
> center of people's personal lives, interact with the spy agencies that look
> to their vast trove of information - e-mails, videos, online chats, photos
> and search queries - for intelligence. They illustrate how intricately the
> government and tech companies work together, and the depth of their
> behind-the-scenes transactions.
>
> The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which
> owns
> YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL;
> Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the
> discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under
> the
> Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions
> spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from
> discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their
> existence.
>
> In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed
> was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure
> physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some
> instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government
> would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would
> retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.
>
> The negotiations have continued in recent months, as Martin E. Dempsey,
> chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Silicon Valley to meet
> with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel.
> Though the official purpose of those meetings was to discuss the future of
> the Internet, the conversations also touched on how the companies would
> collaborate with the government in its intelligence-gathering efforts, said
> a person who attended.
>
> While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal
> requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is
> not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so.
>
> Details on the discussions help explain the disparity between initial
> descriptions of the government program and the companies' responses.
>
> Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program
> providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line
> between giving the government wholesale access to its servers to collect
> user data and giving them specific data in response to individual court
> orders. Each said it did not provide the government with full,
> indiscriminate access to its servers.
>
> The companies said they do, however, comply with individual court orders,
> including under FISA. The negotiations, and the technical systems for
> sharing data with the government, fit in that category because they involve
> access to data under individual FISA requests. And in some cases, the data
> is transmitted to the government electronically, using a company's servers.
>
> "The U.S. government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the
> information stored in our data centers," Google's chief executive, Larry
> Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement on
> Friday. "We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the
> law."
>
> Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the
> same distinction.
>
> But instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were
> essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the
> key,
> people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such
> a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.
>
> The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company
> lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is
> not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full
> access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and
> efficient way to hand over the data.
>
> Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of
> cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it
> is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even
> with others at the company, and in some cases have national security
> clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a
> lawyer representing a technology company.
>
> FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep
> for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with
> the orders said. There were 1,856 such requests last year, an increase of 6
> percent from the year before.
>
> In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a
> tech
> company's headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer
> representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed
> software on the company's server and remained at the site for several weeks
> to download data to an agency laptop.
>
> In other instances, the lawyer said, the agency seeks real-time
> transmission
> of data, which companies send digitally.
>
> Twitter spokesmen did not respond to questions about the government
> requests, but said in general of the company's philosophy toward
> information
> requests: Users "have a right to fight invalid government requests, and we
> stand with them in that fight."
>
> Twitter, Google and other companies have typically fought aggressively
> against requests they believe reach too far. Google, Microsoft and Twitter
> publish transparency reports detailing government requests for information,
> but these reports do not include FISA requests because they are not allowed
> to acknowledge them.
>
> Yet since tech companies' cooperation with the government was revealed
> Thursday, tech executives have been performing a familiar dance, expressing
> outrage at the extent of the government's power to access personal data and
> calling for more transparency, while at the same time heaping praise upon
> the president as he visited Silicon Valley.
>
> Even as the White House scrambled to defend its online surveillance,
> President Obama was mingling with donors at the Silicon Valley home of Mike
> McCue, Flipboard's chief, eating dinner at the opulent home of Vinod
> Khosla,
> the venture capitalist, and cracking jokes about Mr. Khosla's big, shaggy
> dogs.
>
> On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, posted on Facebook
> a
> call for more government transparency. "It's the only way to protect
> everyone's civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want
> over the long term," he wrote.
>
> Reporting was contributed by Nick Bilton, Vindu Goel, Nicole Perlroth and
> Somini Sengupta in San Francisco; Edward Wyatt in Washington; Brian X. Chen
> and Leslie Kaufman in New York; and Nick Wingfield in Seattle.
>
>
>
>
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