Google Takes On Obama, NSA and Congress

Put up your dukes! En-Gard you fools! If anyone has the money and resolve to take on our governments privacy violations it is Google! Bravo... Bravo Indeed! And I think someone needs to have a heart to heart talk with Snowden about what evidence exists. Although Greenwald possesses this vast resource, Snowden gathered it and should be quite familiar with its contents.

Now Alexander says this is just flat out not true. And we all know how honest he is, right? This recent development could get quite interesting.

Schmidt of Google also pointed out the absurdity of NSA spying. They collected the phone records of over 320 million people to identify roughly 300 POTENTIAL terrorists.

Schmidt told the newspaper in Hong Kong that Google had registered complaints with the National Security Agency (NSA), President Barack Obama and Congress members.

According to a Washington Post report on Wednesday, the NSA had tapped directly into communications links used by Google and Yahoo Inc to move huge amounts of email and other user information among overseas data centers.

Responding to the report, the NSA said the suggestion that it relied on a presidential order on foreign intelligence- gathering to skirt domestic restrictions imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other laws "is not true."

"I can tell you factually we do not have access to Google servers, Yahoo servers," NSA Director General Keith Alexander said at a conference last week. "We go through a court order."

Google's Schmidt says NSA spying outrageous if true - WSJ

I'm not a fan of rap, but I couldn't resist

Bold words from a company that drops trou and bends over for tyrannical governments at the first request...

From China censorship to NSA spying googles track records on privacy is not stellar.

If they take a real stand and do something I might change my mind, until than I won't hold my breath.

At this point I'm thinking the NSA is Google, presenting the illusion of ambivalence to maintain plausible deniability.

reply to post by elouina

I will never assume privacy via any electronic comms again.No matter who says/does what.

reply to post by NthOther


Much like mcafee wanting to make an NSA proof box, I raise an eyebrow in skepticism...

As if the push back to the spying now requires shows of false resistance to pacify the populous rage.

benrl
Bold words from a company that drops trou and bends over for tyrannical governments at the first request...

From China censorship to NSA spying googles track records on privacy is not stellar.

If they take a real stand and do something I might change my mind, until than I won't hold my breath.

edit on 5-11-2013 by benrl because: (no reason given)

In Google's defense, it was indicated that revealing any of this was a serious crime. So how could they fight any of this other than to plea with the NSA and the top secret Fisa court themselves? This was total tyranny that couldn't be fairly fought. Prior to this recent revelation only American citizens could bring suit. It was not Google that violated our privacy, it was our own government. We were the ones that were hurt by this.

Previously the US was spying, "legally" (well what they considered legal) with their court orders and the Fisa court overlooking everything. But now, the NSA has stolen their way into Google's property and privacy with out any warrants. They now have just cause for a really big battle.

And this can also do Americans a lot of good if it can be proven that the NSA is getting out of hand. And maybe, just maybe, we can get rid of the NSA altogether.

Google is a victim just like you or I. Now here is some proof' to the crime the NSA perpetrated against them. It appears that the NSA is stealing Google and yahoo cloud information since this info that they got only exists in the clouds. Plus the two companies DO NOT use the public internet for their data center communications. They have thousands of miles of PRIVATE fiber optic cable.

The U.S. government declined repeated requests to discuss the story beginning eight days before it was published. Since publication it has made four responses.

Ok here Alexander admits this would be illegal to do. Although he flat out denies this.

Alexander replied:

That’s never happened. […] This is not the NSA breaking into any databases. It would be illegal for us to do that.

We do not know exactly how the NSA and GCHQ intercept the data, other than it happens on British territory. But we do know they are intercepting it from inside the Yahoo and Google private clouds, because some of what NSA and GCHQ collect is found nowhere else.

“This is not traffic you would encounter outside of Google's internal network,” said one of the experts. The slide shows data in a format that is “only used on and between Google machines. And, also as far as I know, Google doesn't publish their binary RPC protocol, which is what this resembles."

How we know the NSA had access to internal Google and Yahoo cloud data

Proof - Info they could not acquire through conventional spying:

Another NSA document, similarly, describes NSA’s use of a “demultiplexer” tool to take apart data packages sent across Yahoo’s internal networks in that company’s proprietary “NArchive” format.

The project name for this collection is MUSCULAR, which corresponds to an alphanumeric string, DS-200B:

Another NSA slide provided by former contractor Edward Snowden showed that the NSA developed Google-specific “protocol handlers" so that it could parse the company’s proprietary formats and pull out the information it wanted to keep.

reply to post by elouina


I don't know how congress can continue to allow our government to spy on its citizens. They take an oath to uphold our constitution, yet a lot of them are calling Snowden a traitor when he's the one that has triggered this outrage at home and with our allies. I remember back during the civil rights era and during the Vietnam protests, our government was secretly spying on it's citizens illegally.

The Minaret program, which lasted from 1967 to 1973, was a surveillance program aimed at intercepting the telegrams and phone calls of critics of the war in Vietnam.

So here we are in the 21st century and our government is still doing the same illegal activities they were doing back then, as congress and the president are turning a blind eye to it. If our representative can't protect our liberties, the people of the U.S. will have to demand that judges declare this activity illegal based upon our constitutional rights. We must support Google.

reply to post by WeRpeons


Exactly, we are all in this together, no matter if you consider Google a friend or foe. Thank you for seeing my point.


I guess in a sense with all of Google's complaining over the years, they could be considered legal conventional whistleblowers. This is exactly where Snowden would be sitting if he blew the whistle legally. You or I would have been none the wiser.And this NSA spying would go on its merry way all while Snowden was ignored, just like Google was.

Goggle did do battle with the NSA, legally! If they would have come out publicly, Schmidt would be sitting in Russia right now like Snowden. You know not everyone has the guts to give up their entire lives. There are a lot of Snowdens out there right now, that hold the key to even more info than he had. And they have not said a word either,

Woa woa woa wo wo wo. Wait a second...

According to a Washington Post report on Wednesday, the NSA had tapped directly into communications links used by Google and Yahoo Inc to move huge amounts of email and other user information among overseas data centers.

Data moved abroad?! whatever for?

Guantanamo bay for data?

reply to post by Biigs


Its common to replicate data from one data centre to others to cover for downtimes/failures and its that piece of normal day to day operation that they hijacked as they know that yahoo/google will sync their data centres regularly and all they need to do is drop a tap in the right place and they're probably getting the updated information faster than googles own servers

Like Google has a place complaining about the NSA spying on people. Pot meet Kettle. Google does the same thing they scan your emails and sells the info to advertisement companies.

NthOther
At this point I'm thinking the NSA is Google, presenting the illusion of ambivalence to maintain plausible deniability.

I was thinking the same thing. It must make it very easy to register a complaint when the NSA has satellite facilities right on the Google Campus. Perhaps they even have an office or two on the same floor as Google Execs.

Pot: YOU'RE TOO BLACK!

Kettle: Oh really?

Google has been in the Democratic pocket forever. This is all a dog and pony show.

Goggle did do battle with the NSA, legally! If they would have come out publicly, Schmidt would be sitting in Russia right now like Snowden.

reply to post by elouina


That's the difference between going it alone as to having the money and legal backing to protect you. It makes me sick knowing that this young man, Snowden, was trying to do the right thing because he had a moral conscience, and truly believed our rights were being trampled upon. It takes someone with strong moral convictions and a sense of patriotic duty to put their life on the line for the benefit of U.S. citizens. Something that are political leaders and representatives easily delegate to our young men and women in uniform. It's a sad state of affairs when someone like Dick Cheney calls Snowden a traitor. Considering all the criminal decisions he was involved in during his time in office.

Well this thread may not be popular, but I stand behind principles, and this is important news. Your Google that many of you have put down here, just shut down "Muscular", with encryption. Yeah they do have the money to fight the NSA, and they just did they way they know best. (Insert evil laugh here.)

Google has started to encrypt its traffic between its data centers, effectively halting the broad surveillance of its inner workings by the joint National Security Agency-GCHQ program known as MUSCULAR. The move turns off a giant source of information to the two agencies, which at one point accounted for nearly a third of the NSA's daily data intake for its primary intelligence analysis database—at least for now.

Googlers say “F*** you” to NSA, company encrypts internal network