Originally posted by Moonlight J
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Originally posted by bryanbutler
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The legal problem is that the existence of the dropbox program means that the companies themselves would have to hand over all this mass of private user data without specific court orders ... which of course is something that they are vehemently denying ... and would be an even more crippling blow to their credibility. It also doesn't fit with what we are hearing from the authorities, the Obama administration, and the intelligence committees within their justifications for the PRISM program. FISA green lit the PRISM program ... the PRISM program in its day-to-day operations does not require any further court orders to be made. It was designed that way. It takes what it wants.
What is the point of the dropbox system if the companies are just going to hand over all the data unquestioningly anyway ... they have no choice? The only people who can get harmed by dropbox are therefore the companies themselves.
Legally speaking, it would be much better for the companies if they were simply forced to allow the NSA direct access without an intermediary process ... it would be far far worse for the companies themselves if it was revealed that they who openly handed over all the data ... rather than the NSA just taking it. Verizon was given a blanket order to hand over ALL the data on EVERYONE. PRISM was designed to do the same thing for the Internet.
Either way, it amounts to the same thing ... the NSA just taking any data they want, filtering, analysing, grading and storing it. Dropbox just turns out to be so much worse of the companies themselves IMO ... it also seems a lot less convenient for NSA which is why I doubt this is the way it works. The companies would want to have deniability for the data being taken. Indeed, that is their line.
As an aside, I find it funny that Twitter are coming out and saying the refused to allow PRISM access to their systems. It's Twitter ... everything is public ... they don't need access to your servers get all the data they want / need. These revelations of innocence are just putting an even darker cloud over the other tech firms who are still in full-on denial mode. It looks more like "hey look at us ... see we didn't do anything wrong ... we're not like those other companies"
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Let me caution you regarding that article you quoted. That was authored by Charles Arthur. He is the "technology" editor of the Guardian. He is a running joke among readers for his amateurish technology articles and uber-pro-Apple/corporate stance. He's a corporate schill and an embarrassment to proper journalism. He is clueless about even his own field, so I wouldn't be quoting his opinion on anything let alone politics.
He was just this week flown to Apple's iOS7 release by Apple. In general he is nothing more than a front for Apple. And I'm not saying this for convenience sake. I remember thinking last week when this clown would chime in with his idiotic observations on the technology angle ... and hey presto, it's an article about how these uber Companies are desperately trying to prove their innocence.
This is also one of the reasons why I find it so ironic that it's The Guardian who are leaking all this information and taking the moral high ground. Because they are just as responsible as the rest of our shackled media for the promotion of the lies that dominate our lives. In terms of day-to-day news reporting, The Graun are virtually the same as the rest. The idea that was floating around at the beginning, that it was the Guardian who convinced Edward Snowden to leak the data is preposterous to anyone who reads The Guardian on a daily basis.
The Guardian have this image as real investigative journalists. This was the paper who broke the news about "Operation Treadstone" in the Bourne movies. They aren't, but they love the image that they are. They were handed all this data on a platter (just like the Wikileaks data) because of the image they have. They have some good journalists, that's all. Editorially, they are a joke paper for the most part ... like the rest.
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