Saturday, June 8, 2013

Google denies giving spies access to its servers

Google denies giving spies access to its servers

Telegraph.co.uk
24 minutes ago

Written by
Richard Gray

The internet search giant posted a statement on its official blog insisting that it had not joined a US government program called Prism.
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Google denies giving spies access to its servers

Google has denied that it has allowed either the US or UK governments access to its servers through a controversial secret spy program.

Google's campus-network room at a data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Google's campus-network room at a data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Photo: GOOGLE
The internet search giant posted a statement on its official blog insisting that it had not joined a US government program called Prism.
The UK intelligence service GCHQ has also been accused of gathering intelligence on British citizens through the program, which is has been used by the US National Security Agency to access online communications.
Larry Page, Google's chief executive, and David Drummond, the company's chief legal officer, said that it had not given any government open access to information stored in their data centres, either directly or through a "back door".
They said: "We have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government – or any other government – direct access to our servers.
"Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centres. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
"Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.
"We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process.
"Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period."
MPs from Britain's Intelligence and Security Committee are going to Washington next week to seek guarantees that US spies are not snooping on emails sent by British citizens.
Leaked US documents appeared to show that GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, has had access to the Prism system since 2010.
If true it raises the prospect that the agency has been able to circumvent UK restrictions on accessing people's communications by obtaining the information via the US authorities.
GCHQ is due to report to MPs next week to respond to the accusations, but it has already said that it operated to "a strict legal and policy framework".
Barack Obama, the US President, has also staunchly defended the surveillance of phone and internet activity by US spies, calling it a "modest encroachment" on privacy that was necessary to defend the United States from attack.
He said that Prism, which allowed NSA and FBI agents to tap into the servers of nine US internet giants including Facebook, Google, YouTube, Apple and others, was only used against specific individuals living abroad.
He said: "It does not apply to people living in the United States."
Several internet giants have now denied opening their servers up to the US government.
"We have never heard of Prism," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling.
Facebook's chief security officer Joe Sullivan said the huge social network did not provide any access to government organisations.
The statement from Google, added: "We understand that the US and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety – including sometimes by using surveillance.
"But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish."

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Google denies giving spies access to its servers

I think we have reached a time when the right of states to exist and the right of privacy which allows humans to survive and to make a living so they can have money to buy food and find a place to live is at stake.

When a government can find out literally anything about you including who you talk to, what you say to other people your right to survive is at stake. Because at that point a government (or any nefarious person or persons within it) can interfere with you ever getting a job so you might be homeless or even killed at any point. 

So, the right to survive for a state must be weighed against the right to survive for every individual in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Globalization many studies have found destroys nation states both directly and indirectly. 

Because nation states can only function just like corporations within nets of secrecy. But look at things like Wikileaks. Civil operations like that one end all or most secrecy for governments by publicly announcing their doings. So, as nation states inevitably get weaker through all aspects of globalization they will try to take away all rights of individuals to try to survive as nation states.

If we understand that Globalization (at least for now) is the end of privacy and of national Governments it is easier to understand why all this is happening. 

Globalization by its very nature is self defeating for individual privacy and for the existience of all governance and governments worldwide.

Understanding and accepting this statement will allow the human race to survive and not go extinct.

Globalization, individual privacy and governments destroy each other. So, Globalization is not only the end of all governments it is the end of all privacy and will lead directly to the extinction of the human race. 

 

So, in order for the human race to survive, Globalization will have to be eliminated at some point by agreement of some or most of the people still alive at that point. 


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