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Comment by vox_mollis | Hacker News Reader

There is a large difference between being a PRISM partner( broad hoovering of all data )and a party to a narrowly-scoped warrant or subpoena, as Amazon would be.

Meyer would do well to cite the specific statute that makes noncompliance into a charge of treason. Otherwise she's clearly lying to spin the actions of Yahoo for PR points.

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Well we can go through a back and forth on this but we'll never really know the true extent of PRISM as whats been speculated is they have a direct connection to ISP's so the reality is that they probably know more than what even an individual company knows. Both Google and Apple have said the same, any access requires court order.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

Google: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data."[112] "[A]ny suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false."[113]

Apple: "We have never heard of PRISM. 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."[115]

The belief that PRISM is targeted is 1. in contrast to the leaked slides, and 2. the determination of the PCLOB, which was appointed by . . . the executive branch of the US Government. The findings of the PCLOB are about as useful as lung cancer studies commissioned by Phillip-Morris.

PRISM partners' denials are, of course, standard and expected PR moves.

Is there any evidence that PRISM wasn't just the program where they tapped the private fiber lines between Google's data centers and siphoned off the data? That would fit in line with the code name (where they use a crystal to splice the light from the fiber line)...

I can't see the hundreds of people it would take at google staying quiet for this long about being involved in giving the NSA direct access to servers. There would be at least one whistle blower on that side of things...

Google is a very low-profile, high-importance contractor for the US Federal government, specifically for the intelligence agencies. It's kind of startling how little even HN readers know about this.

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/why-google-made-the-...

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

I find it very difficult to believe that US Federal Contracts have not swayed their levels of cooperation at the highest level.

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