[Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Peter Southwood]

Does the law actually require them to lie about data demands when 
questioned?
P
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nathan" <nawrich at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 1:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA


> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at frontier.com> 
> wrote:
>> On 7/31/2013 3:31 PM, Nathan wrote:
>>>
>>> And another thought - you know what unites most of the other companies
>>> represented by the logos in that image? Leaks have confirmed that most
>>> of them are the subject of secret orders to turn over huge amounts of
>>> raw data to the government. They are all bound to secrecy by law, so
>>> without permission none of them are permitted to describe or disclose
>>> the nature or extent of the data demands the U.S. government has made.
>>>
>>> Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
>>> Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
>>> hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
>>> blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.
>>
>> Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from
>> "most" to "all" in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the
>> similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind of
>> rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's how 
>> they
>> get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>>
>>
>
> It's hardly a conspiracy theory. Given the differences between mail.ru
> and Wikipedia, I should think it would be clear why one might be
> subject to a direct demand for transferring data while the other is
> not. If anything, I think it's more reasonable to assume that
> Wikipedia (which shares many features with Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
> Facebook and other social networks) has been the subject of this kind
> of demand than that it hasn't. No one with direct knowledge would be
> able to do anything other than deny it, but we can easily see why data
> held by Wikipedia (including partially anonymized e-mails, file
> uploads, talk page communication, etc.) would be of interest to
> intelligence agencies.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>