When A Flawed Article Brings Important Perspective-Page it anyway
Let me say the title is hopelessly overblown. But some information was too good to ignore. Mea Culpa.
“The fact is, the government can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” says FaceÂbook’s global communications head, Michael Buckley. “We can put out any statement or statistics, but in the wake of what feels like weekly disclosures of other government activity, the question is, will anyone believe us?”
Even the most emphatic denial—a blog post by Google CEO Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond headlined, “What the …”—did not quell suspicions. How could it, when an NSA slide indicated that anyone’s personal information was just one click away?
Yahoo waged a secret battle in the FISA court to resist turning over user data. But it was for naught. An August 22, 2008, order determined that the government’s interest in national security, along with safeguards in the program, outweighed privacy concerns in a manner consistent with the law. A subsequent appeal went nowhere. Yahoo’s unsuccessful challenge set a marker for those who might resist in the future: The FISA request program was legal, and any company that failed to cooperate would risk the contempt charges specified in the law.
All summer, the tech companies tried to deal with the fallout from Prism, while the NSA tried to figure out how to respond to the Snowden leaks. And then things got uglier for both sides.