Tech Firms Planning Highly Irate Letter To Government Requesting Transparency 139
Nerval's Lobster writes "a 'broad alliance' of 63 technology companies and civil liberties organizations plan on demanding more transparency about U.S. government surveillance programs, according to a new report in AllThingsD. Those companies and organizations will reportedly ask the government to allow them to report more accurate information about user-data requests. At the moment, federal agencies forbid Google, Microsoft, and other tech vendors from reporting more than a broad numerical range; for example, Google might announce as part of its Transparency Report that it received between 0-999 National Security Letters (issued by agencies as part of national security investigations) in 2009. 'We seek permission for the same information to be made available regarding the government's national security–related authorities," reads a portion of a letter that will be reportedly published July 19 and signed by all those tech companies. "This information about how and how often the government is using these legal authorities is important to the American people, who are entitled to have an informed public debate about the appropriateness of those authorities and their use.' This is all continuing fallout from Edward Snowden's leaks of top-secret documents alleging that the NSA maintains a program called PRISM that allegedly siphons personal information from the databases of the world's largest tech companies. Ever since, those companies (which have all denied participation in PRISM) have been anxious to show the world that they only give the government as little user data as possible. This new push for more 'transparency' plays to that strategy, and the stakes couldn't be higher—if consumers and businesses lose faith in their IT providers' ability to preserve privacy, the latter's very existence could be at risk."
Even if they reported more "accurate" numbers... (Score:4, Insightful)
... could we trust them?
better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't the real problem something else? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only time they'd need to make a request is when:
a) The data is from before they've been collecting
b) The data in their database is not yet nicely formatted for easy access
c) They are missing the encryption keys, for some reason
Isn't the splitter the big worry? And that these requests are just a small part? Combined with the fact that I'm not an American, this means they can collect a huge database of my personal data, and look at it any time, without asking anyone for permission. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what's going on?
Re:Screw 'em all (Score:5, Insightful)
You assume too much. This "irate letter" seems a lot more like a negotiating tactic than anything else. Remember, these corporations signing the letter are among the most privileged of all corporations, in terms of how the government treats them. They have their own personal tax laws, that allow them to claim that their profits are all earned in Luxemburg, and they have private countries where they keep their intellectual property so they don't have to pay taxes here. They are given special treatment from the local level right on up to the federal government. They have enjoyed decades of protection from anti-trust legislation (and yes, that includes Microsoft, even with their successful prosecution). These companies are a part of the government as are the biggest banks and the biggest energy companies.
I believe that behind closed doors, Google, Microsoft, et al, are just fine with the surveillance state, because it plays to their strengths and they're already on the inside. I'm not sure NSA spying harms their interests in any way.
face saving (Score:5, Insightful)
"They are violating our rights, spying on everyone and forcing us to cooperate in all of that." - "I got it! Let's send them a really stern letter!"
This is PR damage-control, nothing else. They're trying to create the impression they were unwilling accomplices.
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting weight behind a letter seems a bit fanciful.
On the other hand, they can simply present it as a demand, and state that the alternative is each of them will publish ALL the letters delivered to ANY of them and refuse to comply.
Let the DOJ or the DOD put ALL 69 Companies in jail or shut them down. Especially when the government is dependent on most of them and the citizens are customers of all of them.
Re:Screw 'em all (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that behind closed doors, Google, Microsoft, et al, are just fine with the surveillance state, because it plays to their strengths and they're already on the inside.
I don't think you have any evidentiary basis on which to base that judgment.
It wouldn't surprise me if Google and Microsoft have convinced themselves that whatever they did was right. Moreover, I find it easy to believe that the exact extent of their complicity (unlike, say, the extent of the complicity of telcos) was exaggerated in the leaked documents themselves, and they are genuinely pissed off that they can't set the record straight (as they see it).
Did they go further than you or I or any other civil liberties-minded person would? Almost certainly. But how far did they actually go? We don't know, and they're not allowed to say.
It's rich that the NSA gets to spin this as "people are talking crap about stuff they don't know anything about" (e.g. "the PRISM isn't a programme, just the name of a specific database" line) . What the hell did they expect? No, we don't have complete information first-hand from the people who truly understand it. That's exactly the problem.
So I applaud the tech companies for actually trying to disclose more. More information means we have a better basis on which to judge them, and judge them we shall.
Dump it all (Score:5, Insightful)
You spineless twits, you have utterly and completely shattered the trust you had. Fuck you and fuck your cloud; I hope this exposure of your complicity with the criminal organizations in D.C. costs you billions in lost business. I don't care how you do it; leak information, "oops we were hacked", whatever. Dump it all.
The fact that there is 1 person, 1 guy out of >300 million in this country who has the balls to stand up speaks volumes to who the true enemy and threat to the American people, hell the people of Earth FFS, are: the U.S. Federal government.
So either these spineless companies are trying to save face, or Snowden has still got some really juicy dirt left up his sleeve.
I really, really hope it's the latter.
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Insightful)
That falls in line with my own thoughts. It's time that the people showed government that government works FOR THE PEOPLE, not the other way around.
Just publish all the details. Publish everything. Tell the government to go screw itself - they can't enforce unjust laws. Government can scream "CONSPIRACY" all they want, but if 60, 75, even 90% of people and corporations are in on it, what can government do?
A number of articles over the past weeks have shown that congress really doesn't have a clue what NSA is up to. Congress critters lack the technical understanding to figure this stuff out. But, worse, the NSA only "answers to" a small committee, and that committee isn't sharing jack-shit with the rest of congress.
Each year, congress authorizes money for NSA and the rest of government, without any accounting for that money. I think that congress should just cut that money by about 75% and tell NSA to make do. At the same time, demand a full accounting for HOW that money is spent. If NSA doesn't have a billion dollars with which to snoop on citizens, and another billion with which to pay "analysts", then they won't be snooping and analyzing citizens. The money that they have left will be targeted specifically toward terrorism and national security.
What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
I like that this is happening, but I can't see it making any difference in itself. Yahoo fought in secret courts to protect user data, and lost. Even if US companies are trying to do the right thing, we can't trust them because we can't trust the US government.
If companies had the right to come out and say "we only gave the US data this information because we had no choice", would you still want to deal with them? The company might win sympathy points, but that clearly doesn't mean we can trust it. This is particularly true for end users outside of the US.