We were going to discuss reasons why people do not trust Google, but in
light of the news over the past couple days, the issue has taken a
different shape. By itself, it does not matter for many people in the US
who are now trying to grasp the
depth of the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. Unfortunately,
it appears that these massive depots of information storage, Google,
Facebook, Twitter, et al, are simply too attractive a source for data
mining outside their intended purpose (advertising) and are finding
another use given the activities being performed under the auspices of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, passed in 1978). When
you read the statements from the companies involved, one thing should
be apparent, data was indeed shared. Moreover, from the looks of
things, it seems like these big players, most notably Google and
Facebook, were, in fact, working with the NSA to actually build separate
portals with which the government could request information and the
companies would deposit said information. To put it plainly, they made
it easier to transfer data. Twitter was also approached by the government to develop a similar mechanism, however Twitter declined to do so.
FISA
requests are legal, and they are secret, recipients are often under a
gag order to not even acknowledge an order’s existence, but they do not mandate that it be easier for the government to grab information. Indeed,
it looks like instead of a back door (something that so many paranoid
people worry about), the government was given a back room at some of
these companies. Sometimes, the government has a front row seat too.
According to The New York Times, an NSA agent visited a tech company in
Silicon Valley to observe a suspect involved in a cyberattack. The
agent installed government software on the servers and remained there
for weeks downloading data onto government hardware. Sometimes, the NSA
is seeking real-time transmission of data...
more
No comments:
Post a Comment