Last Thursday, the Washington Post outted the Feds Internet monitoring program Prism.
For details see the Washington Post article: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
On Friday, most of the Internet companies reported to be part of the Fed’s Prism monitoring program expressed outrage and denied their involvement.
Did you notice that practically all of the denials centered on the same exact phrase:
That the companies didn’t provide the Feds with “direct access to our central servers”.
Hmmm … that raises some questions, doesn’t it?
First, did the Fed’s alleged Internet partners coordinate their responses?
Answer: Of course they did … and there’s nothing illegal about that.
More important, what exactly does the phrase “no direct access to our servers” mean?
Let’s parse the phrase …
“No direct access”
Hmmm.
Could there be an intermediary involved?
Maybe Google provides direct server access to the InterGalactic Data Company (a made up name) … and that IDC grabs data from Google’s servers, cleans & structures it, and then ships transmits the data to the Feds.
OK, the Feds got all of the data without having “direct access”.
And, what about: “ … to our central servers”.
What about peripheral servers? You know, the “cloud”.
“To our central servers” is way different than “to our site’s content”.
So, could be that the Feds get direct access to content … just not to the hardware.
= = = = =
My take: Google and friends were too cute by half … their carefully worded denials are likely to spark more interest in the matter.
Also, I’m betting the over on how much info is flowing from Google to the Feds.
= = = = =
P.S. For the record: I really don’t care if the Feds monitor the HomaFiles or @KenHoma … in fact, maybe they’d learn some things if they did.
* * * * *
Follow on Twitter @KenHoma >> Latest Posts
The Homa Files 
Leave a comment