{"id":20596,"date":"2013-06-08T10:10:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-08T15:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20596"},"modified":"2013-06-08T10:10:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-08T15:10:22","slug":"dont-put-too-much-faith-in-denials-from-verizon-and-other-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/06\/08\/dont-put-too-much-faith-in-denials-from-verizon-and-other-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t put too much faith in denials from Verizon and other companies…"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Mic Wright<\/a> points out, the companies named in the Prism leaks may not be acting as free agents:<\/p>\n

Pastor Niemoller\u2019s \u201cFirst they came\u2026\u201d poem is over-quoted but with good reason. It is far too easy to be complacent. Addicted and reliant as many of us are on free web services, it\u2019s more convenient to just accept the companies outright denials that they have been complicit with the NSA\u2019s programme. But look closely at those statements and things become rather less clear, as Michael Arrington pointed out.<\/p>\n

The tech industry\u2019s denials have been carefully drafted and similarly worded. It is not unfeasible to imagine that those companies have turned over users’ personal information to the NSA in another fashion. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s statement was one of the strongest: \u201cFacebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg\u2019s words are reassuring until you consider that any company that receives an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act — the legislation the Obama administration is using to justify the broad surveillance — is forbidden from disclosing they have received it or disclosing any information about it. It\u2019s not surprising that no mea culpas have emerged from major tech firms or that Palantir — the big data surveillance company with the $5 billion valuation and CIA funding — denies any connection with the project. The NSA has been a Palantir client and one of the company\u2019s co-founders, billionaire investor Peter Thiel, also sits on Facebook\u2019s board.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Mic Wright points out, the companies named in the Prism leaks may not be acting as free agents: Pastor Niemoller\u2019s \u201cFirst they came\u2026\u201d poem is over-quoted but with good reason. It is far too easy to be complacent. Addicted and reliant as many of us are on free web services, it\u2019s more convenient to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,84,9,10,15],"tags":[476,391,913,154,547,911],"class_list":["post-20596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-government","category-law","category-liberty","category-technology","tag-espionage","tag-facebook","tag-nsa","tag-privacy","tag-smartphones","tag-surveillance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5mc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20597,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20596\/revisions\/20597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}