So I think that the story around PRISM specifically is a bit confused. PRISM was initially reported as mass collection of data by the NSA, and Google has repeatedly denied that they took part in that. They do co-operate with targeted national security letter investigations, and with police with warrants, but they are known to challenge both. Quoting the page you linked to:

Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

Here is some details about the hack the NSA did on Google's infrastructure: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-i...

You should also disclose that you work in the National Security industry, at a Palantir equivalent in Australia.

Wow! This made me laugh. We fund (and sometimes work on ourselves!) research on things like contagious disease prediction, and things like trying to understand mass social actions like elections. Yes, it is national security related, but not exactly that kind of national security! Sometimes the same agencies are involved though - for example, the same agency provides disease alert advice to government as provides political instability advice. So I guess maybe that makes me untrustworthy or something?

I can talk to you at great depth about Dengue Fever modelling and possible ways to try to derive parameters for mosquito breeding models if you like - it's pretty interesting, and maybe that would help some?

Citation? Nothing there says Google worked with the government. In fact, the article has Google saying the opposite. The slides just say "direct access" with no clarification.

Can you point me to exactly what you're reading that indicates Google worked with the NSA ?

You're joking right? This was national news when this was revealed.

You obviously didn't read the link: "The PRISM program collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms."

Obeying the law is not "working with"

The previous accusation was that Google was hacked and unaware that PRISM was collecting data, which is what I was referring to. Please read the thread before commenting.

OK well in that case every person/company in the country "works with" the USG since they comply with some laws/demands.

Google initially denied that they complied with the usage of PRISM, until documentation showed they were lying. Apple held out longer than Google, so at some point they all had to decide that they were going to "work" with the USG.

Please give me an exact citation. Perhaps update Wikipedia while you're at it?

I've never edited wikipedia, but my understanding is that it is labor intensive. I'll just provide a citation here:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/us-tech-giants...

The words "mandatory" and "compulsory" figure prominently in that article.

Anyone care to elaborate why I'm being downvoted?

I didn't downvote you but if you read the comments guidelines[0] they are helpful and cover some of the comments you made above.

As an aside, your profile says you signed up 1337 days ago and your karma is at 1358. Another 21 down-votes and your Hacker News profile page will looking pretty leet - I say go for it. Remember, it's just fake internet points, you can't spend them or do anything interesting with them.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

On Reddit you can actually sell your Internet Points. Apparently spammers like to get high-karma accounts for spamming purposes.

From what I understand they had front door access, but the NSA wiretapped between datacenters.

Google engineers issue 'fuck you' to NSA over surveillance scandal http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/6/5072924/google-engineers-i...