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Comment by Camillo | Hacker News Reader

While OP's apology is appreciable, there was more than enough information available in 2008 to understand that his Czech colleagues were right.

The Prism scandal may have come as a surprise to US citizens, but the US has been spying foreign nationals and companies for years, and we've long known about it - haven't you heard of Echelon? It was also well known that these systems were used for industrial espionage.

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Agreed. From September 7, 2001, on CNN:

European Parliament adopts 'Echelon' report

(...) the document lists several examples in which intelligence officers are believed to have interfered in a commercial contract. The report claims that European aircraft maker Airbus Industrie had its lines tapped in 1994 while negotiating a $6 billion contract with the Saudi Arabian government and national airline.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/09/07/echelon.rep...

Huh. How is "You should've known!" a useful response to an apology? Of course he should've known, that's why he's apologizing.

There is a big difference between "Subsequent facts have shown them to be right" and "Evidence existing at the time already strongly indicated they were right".

It is a useful response because it allows for the solution to these sorts of things to occur: continued discussion of the need to enlighten oneself, and be aware of the lies of the world as they are told. An apology is not the last step, merely the first, in amending the situation .. and thus a continued dialog is of use.

It's written as if dubious access to data by US (and other; see ECHELON) security services is a startling new revelation, whereas in fact it has been a known risk for a couple of decades, and certainly a consideration when using hosted services. Here is a European commissioner raising it as a concern with respect to the Data Protection Directive, over a decade ago, for instance: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-01-368_en.pdf

Exactly, AFAIR it's always been sorta known that US intelligence agencies can spy on non-US citizen data held on US servers without a warrent. The PRISM lark is mostly big because it's spying on US citizens.

It is big for that reason in the US. The rest of the world is shocked by the, now undeniable, extend of the spying.

Everybody will think thrice before storing their data in the US. Especially since Obama has made it more than clear that the rule of law does not apply to foreigners.

Even PRISM turned out to not be spying on U.S. citizens though. The NSL or FISA warrant required demonstrating that the target was more likely than not to be a foreigner.

Verizon metadata is different perhaps, as is the idea of 641A-style mass interception of communications. But PRISM itself automated FISA compliance, it didn't actually create more NSA powers than existed before it.

Agreed - that was the exact reason that I was apologizing to the guys in CZ. I simply had no idea. Once we talked through the issue, I trusted their judgment (just like they've trusted ours on the areas we know better).

It was simply an area I'd never done any work in - that's the benefit of a global, diverse (and still very small) organization.

I "know" that aliens are kept at Area 51. Should I prepare for the invasion?

Nothing was "known" until these leaks. It was the conspiracy theory of nut jobs. Now and only now is it "known".

> It was the conspiracy theory of nut jobs.

no. you should have a very short memory, or you just consider the dossier made by "European Commission" about Echelon the work of nut jobs: http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep-fin.htm

Yes, nutjobs like the EU's executive and legislative bodies, the BBC and the Guardian. Who would ever take them seriously?

Really, ECHELON in particular has been acknowledged to exist by pretty much everybody since 2000 or so.

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