DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Google / NSA Partnership

SonicSpike writes "The Justice Department is defending the government's refusal to discuss — or even acknowledge the existence of — any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency. The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency. The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called 'Glomar' response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July."

We can neither confirm nor deny ...

[realitycheckplease]

Occasionally, when in the name of security, someone says "we can neither confirm nor deny x", x isn't happening (for whatever value of "happening" is appropriate to x). In this case, given the US attitude to jurisdiction the reality may be quite simple. Any data or communications processed on or passed through any system that is owned, operated, managed or otherwise controlled by any US entity or subsidiary thereof may be arbitrarily hoovered up by the NSA or other similar agencies. They will then analyse it however they wish for whatever purpose they want. This can happen regardless of what connections are known to exist between the US authorities and any individual provider. Attempting to discover the scope and extent of those connections may thus be a pointless exercise. The same thing probably happens in many other countries too.

Re:China issues similar statement

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the first to fall in pwn2own because it was the first one they told them to try cracking.