U.S. Lets Tech Firms Reveal More About Surveillance Washington Post (01/28/14) P. A1 Timberg, Craig; Goldman, Adam Officials with the Justice Department announced Monday that tech firms will now be allowed to publicize broad numerical descriptions of the amount of requests for customer information made by the federal government and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Justice Department notes that tech companies will be allowed to report the number of national security letters and FISC requests they receive in a range from zero to 999. The combined number of national security letters and FISC requests can be reported in a range from zero to 249. Though the change in policy is seen by some as a small victory for the tech companies who had fought for the right to disclose more information about their compliance with government surveillance requests, both these companies and privacy advocates have stated that the concessions are not extensive enough to provide adequate or reliable information on the extent of the governments access to private customer information. The new policy was explained in a letter written by Deputy Attorney General James Cole to the five companies that filed legal action at the FISC asking for more transparency about government data requests. Apple was the first company to use the new rules when it disclosed how many national security letters it had received in the first six months of 2013.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 00:30:26 +0000
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