Last week, negative press in the wake of recent leaks about NSA surveillance prompted Facebook, Google, and Microsoft to politely ask the U.S. government to be allowed to share broad statistics on their legally required role in such activities.
Google is now said by the Washington Post to be preparing legal papers that would make its request more of a demand, claiming that gag orders placed on it disclosing data requests breach the First Amendment. A statement from Google published by the Post says:
“Greater transparency is needed, so today we have petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow us to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.”
This story is only available to subscribers.Don’t settle for half the story.
Subscribe now Already a subscriber? Sign in
Get paywall-free access to technology news for the here and now.