rasterizer

For those now lauding non-US companies: keep in mind that you can not be certain that they aren't under any local intelligence orders and if/when they plan to enter the massive US market they will probably be tapped as well.

He says it's not integrated:

PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision

http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Facts%20on%20the%20Collec...

Then how do you explain the difference between Verizon's statement (http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/from-the-desk-of-...) in which they basically acknowledge the reports and point to their gag-order and tech company execs going on record to strongly deny the reports?

The gulf between these slides and the issued denials and other theories represented by the likes of the NYT (an automated system to speedup compliance) is widening.

Could it be that the slides were made by a non-technical person who was over-selling this? "direct access" could mean "straight from the source".

That is not PRISM though, PRISM is about the existence of backdoors that allow direct access to company servers.

The whole problem with PRISM is that the government potentially can tunnel into company servers and take what they like, and that is being disputed by the accused companies.

I'm not sure what is rumored or not, or what is true or not. My point is that they deny involvement in PRISM, and by PRISM I mean the program that alleges access to company servers.

Yet you keep hanging on that they only mention "direct access" and how the denials are similar, it's not about what you believe to be true or not, it's about the things you say that aren't true - here is an example of a denial that does not only include "direct access" but all sorts of access as well.

Google Chief Legal Officer:

"the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box" https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq

Drummond adds:

We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box. Nor have we received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media. It is quite wrong to insinuate otherwise. We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. And we have taken the lead in being as transparent as possible about government requests for user information.

https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq

Google CLO responding to the NYT et al:

We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box. Nor have we received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media. It is quite wrong to insinuate otherwise. We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. And we have taken the lead in being as transparent as possible about government requests for user information.

https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq

Lawyer-speak tends to be consistent.

That's not true, in Verizon's case they just said that they are under a gag-order: http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/from-the-desk-of-...

I'm not quite sure how you came to that conclusion, to me it reads like the opposite of slick lawyer talk, it's pretty unambiguous:

"No direct access", "No backdoors".

"Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period".

Isn't access to actual servers (shell or otherwise) the real issue here? complying with subpoenas and warrants isn't much of an issue at all.

The NYT also disputes earlier claims:

While the newspapers portrayed the classified documents as indicating that the N.S.A. obtained direct access to the companies’ servers, several of the companies — including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple — denied that the government could do so. Instead, the companies have negotiated with the government technical means to provide specific data in response to court orders, according to people briefed on the arrangements.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/us/nsa-verizon-calls.html?...

The "directly" bit is being questioned:

The Washington Post backtracks on claim tech companies ‘participate knowingly’ in PRISM data collection http://thenextweb.com/us/2013/06/07/wapost-backtracks-on-cla...;

"Front door" is court orders and warrants: these are far less problematic.

Google flatout says "no backdoors".

Why is Google being singled out? atleast they are among the ones denieing this report: http://marketingland.com/google-apple-facebook-deny-nsa-pris...

And why are you omitting Apple from the title while listing Google twice (YouTube)? and what the hell is "msn" and "y"?

Why aren't the rest of the companies on that list issuing false denials if that's the case?

Actually it's the backdoor bit that's more problematic. If they hand data by court order that is acceptable but if the government has direct lines to servers that is much more problematic.

For what it's worth Apple and Google denie it: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100797046

It's funny how some people can produce walls of text attacking Google at the drop of a hat.

If you've actually read that post you'd have noticed that the author is misrepresenting her assumptions as facts by repurposing out of context comments.

The person she was quoting wasn't even speaking about Reader nor was he granting her an interview (the author doesn't specify in what context did she hear all that) it was just another serving of the generic "news in the mobile era" spiel.

The author seems to be attributing some general and unrelated comments to Google Reader - very irresponsible on her part.

Not merely a reinstatement: OAuth 2.0 as well.

Loaning is permitted: https://support.google.com/glass/answer/3064131?hl=en&re...

Google Drive does that as well.

I don't think you know what "proprietary" means, you don't pay Google to use SPDY.

They solved a problem and made something better, case in point Facebook and Twitter among others have already deployed it.

If you do some research you'll find that most standards started as projects that came out of a single company or lab that were later adopted by industry.

I don't see how you can jump to these false assumptions and then call my comment senseless.

Here is the "Blink manifesto" if you will: A proposal for un-prefixing https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/?fromgroups...

As for SPDY it's not proprietary and it's being baked into HTTP 2.0: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-http2-00

And I'm not sure what you mean by "advertising walled garden" other that just throwing around some senseless hostile buzzwords.

This.

Chromium alone puts them in the plus column standard-wise. Usually apps are judged on merit, yet in Google's case there is the misconception that they have to defend every engineering decision they make.

I don't see how this is a hot topic seeing as every other IM is an island, and quite frankly if it means directing more resources towards projects like Google Fiber, personally I think it's more than worth it to sunset GReader or move away from a limiting standard.