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Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile they supply everything directly to the federal government.

Facebook just wants them to go through their special channels so that they can get paid

and it would also allow FB to collect better information about those police users too who i suppose is a highly lucrative targeted advertisement segment for guns/steroids/etc and that also provides significant information about their social graph.

For anyone doubting this, Facebook has a dedicated page for data requests from law enforcement and government officials:

https://www.facebook.com/records

Facebook does a lot of things wrong but I doubt they give any user data to the federal government they are not coerced into providing.

May I introduce you to PRISM? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

Yes, being ordered and gagged by the US government is coercion. Are you familiar with the article you linked to?

I think the point being made is, via PRISM data is provided on the regular with zero coercion. That is, the bar is much lower than (your suggestion of) the need for coercion.

Note: Not taking sides. Only trying to clear up the doubt.

> zero coercion

This is false, although it's reasonable to assume that, during the coersion, some specific people or companies do roll over out of self-interest.

Friend. It's not my position or argument. I was only trying to clear up the comms disconnect.

Facebook has no choice in the matter. Regardless- PRISM is run by the NSA to conduct court-approved foreign surveillance.

Not really court-approved, not exclusively foreign. But NSA.

The NSA is for foreign targets. And a FISA court is a court.

The NSA is supposed to act on foreign targets (which helps me in no way), but the NSA is not only listening to foreign communication. That was part of the lie Clapper told congress and then extensively discussed.

FISA court is not a real court in a "rule of law" sense if it is non-public and creates secret law. Both is the case. Also, maybe even more importantly: The FISA court did not even decide on individual surveillance acts under PRISM, but about the program in whole. Both together means that in no way there is a court oversight for this kind of surveillance.

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