According to security researchers, the top tech companies named in the PRISM spying scandal have all issued denials that are suspiciously similar because they posses two things. One they state they are not a part of the PRISM program and second was that they have not provided any government agencies direct access to their servers. Here is what Google, Apple and Facebook have said in their PRISM denials:
“Google: First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers.
Apple: “We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”
Facebook: Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers.”
A security researcher said that although these PRISM denials do not state that the NSA is mining data from tech companies’ servers, there is a chance the companies are forwarding the data to the agency. There is also a possibility that the NSA has acquired a secret court order to obtain data from these companies. This would make the part of statements that mention they provide data only on court orders to be proven true.
Google mentioned in its PRISM denial statement that, “Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period.” Talking about the search giants statement, an anonymous security researcher said that although this statement seems pretty categorical, when one talks about ‘user data’ it indicates ‘data which can be specifically linked to a named individual.’ On the other hand ‘meta data’ is not taken as a user data.
“The NSA tells Google content of interest to it, for example a name, place or date. Google flags interactions – emails, chat sessions, etc – that contain that content.
Google assigns a 32-bit hash to each account. Only Google knows which hash equates to which account. Google hands over meta-data to the NSA which says account X emailed accounts Y and Z with this content, and the three of them also had Google Hangouts together on these dates. No message content was provided by Google, and because Google doesn’t supply the account names, none of it counts as ‘user data’
Once the NSA decides it wants to know who X, Y and Z are, it obtains specific court orders requiring Google to hand over the account details. Everyone has complied with the law, Google’s denials are true and the NSA has what it wanted.”
Source: 9t05Google
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