firehose

In the ongoing discussion of PRISM and the NSA's data-collection tactics, much debate has raged over the phrase "direct access," as companies have denied allowing the government unfettered access to their data and servers. Now the Washington Post is reporting that while the access may not be constant, it is very much at the government's control. Companies have evidently set up secure portals outside their own servers, which is accessed at the NSA's discretion and even without the knowledge of the company in question.

From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may "task" the system and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company’s staff.

The nature of these queries, of course, is largely still unknown. The PRISM system is apparently engaged by NSA employees, whose queries are routed through the FBI's surveillance unit before being passed through to Google, Facebook, and a handful of other companies. Only a few high-level executives at each company in question were even aware of PRISM's existence, the Post says, a handful of which once again confirmed the existence of the program.

Of course, nearly every one of these points has been categorically denied by the tech companies in question, from the existence of the remote drop-boxes to their participation in PRISM as a whole. But the difference between unrestricted access and direct access appears to be ever more important, along with the difference between a company's servers and the servers a company maintains for the government.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it would leave it up to game publishers to decide how and if used games could be bought and sold for the Xbox One. But Activision, EA, Take-Two and Ubisoft all either declined to comment on what their policy will be or said they hadn't yet decided.

Activision officials acknowledged the question but didn't respond with an answer. A Take-Two official said the company wasn't commenting yet. Ubisoft officials said they were still examining Microsoft's recently announced policy on used games.

"We’re just now getting more information about Microsoft’s plan and starting to examine what it means for our games," a spokesperson told Polygon. "We don’t have anything new to share right now, but rest assured we’ll continue to focus on providing the best experience for our customers no matter how or where they buy our games."

Electronic Arts officials declined to comment, saying that they too were still examining Microsoft's recently announced policy. EA's Frank Gibeau did confirm that their "online passes" won't be returning for Xbox One or PlayStation 4 games.

EA's online pass was a one-time code required to access certain online features like multiplayer first introduced to the publisher's games in late 2009. The system was designed to curb used sales of video games and generate revenue from players who purchased games secondhand, requiring them to pay a fee to get a new code.

Gibeau did say that EA's online pass was "dead. We deep sixed it."

"For gen 3 [PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii], for all products from Electronic Arts, we have discontinued online pass for our new titles as well as eliminating it for existing games," Gibeau said. "The feedback from players was not great. It was something that we've been looking very carefully at over the last 10 weeks or so about all of our policies and practices as a company and how they're being received, and we're evaluating each one of them and making changes accordingly. In the case of online pass, our assessment was that it was a business practice that frankly our fans didn't like and it wasn't serving a purpose so we discontinued it."

What remains unclear is if the publisher will be using the Xbox One's built-in capabilities to somehow charge for used game sales.

And EA wasn't the only company to toy with different concepts that would allow them to receive some form of payment tied to used game sales.

Sony notably attempting to stem piracy on the PSP with an online entitlement voucher for 2010's SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3. Publishers Warner Bros., THQ, Ubisoft and others followed suit, and online passes became a common practice for console and handheld games.

After days of relatively short and vague statements on a leaked Verizon court order and a slideshow on the PRISM data collection program, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has released a statement and fact sheet detailing more information on what PRISM is and how it's run. Clapper criticized a series of "reckless disclosures" by newspapers, which he asserts failed to include the full context of the program. What follows is a series of points justifying the program, detailing how the law is allegedly applied and its legal limits:

• PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government's statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a). This authority was created by the Congress and has been widely known and publicly discussed since its inception in 2008.
• Under Section 702 of FISA, the United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. In short, Section 702 facilitates the targeted acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning foreign targets located outside the United States under court oversight. Service providers supply information to the Government when they are lawfully required to do so.
• The Government cannot target anyone under the court-approved procedures for Section 702 collection unless there is an appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States. We cannot target even foreign persons overseas without a valid foreign intelligence purpose.
• In addition, Section 702 cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, or any other US person, or to intentionally target any person known to be in the United States. Likewise, Section 702 cannot be used to target a person outside the United States if the purpose is to acquire information from a person inside the United States.
• Finally, the notion that Section 702 activities are not subject to internal and external oversight is similarly incorrect. Collection of intelligence information under Section 702 is subject to an extensive oversight regime, incorporating reviews by the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.

Clapper's previous statements pointed to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act or FISA, and much of what he's saying is simply laying out the points of the legal doctrine.