Tech Giants Releases US Surveillance Requests

[Harry-Potter]

Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo have officially disclosed for the first time that tens of thousands of accounts associated with their customers had their information handed over to American government authorities twice a year under the secret court orders.

 

 

4 of the tech giants participating in the NSA’s Prism effort had recently reached a transparency deal with the Justice Department and now were allowed to release more information about the volume of sensitive details the government demands to disclose.

However, the terms of the deal prevent Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo from itemizing the collection, beyond bands of numerous data requests from a secret surveillance court. The tech giants must also delay by 6 months revealing data on the most recent requests.

In the meantime, the firms expressed concerns by the lack of precision over the depth of their compelled participation in government surveillance, saying that more transparency is still required to help everyone understand how surveillance legislation works.

Google, for example, wants to reveal the precise numbers and types of requests it receives, and the number of users affected in a timely way.

During the first half of 2013 (when Snowden’s leaks started), Google revealed the Internet metadata of up to 1000 customer accounts, and the content of communications up to 10,000 customers.

As for Microsoft, the company got fewer than 1,000 orders from the Fisa court for communications content, related up to 16,000 accounts or individual identifiers.
As you remember, Microsoft owns Skype, and therefore received up to 1,000 orders for metadata, revealing communications patterns instead of individual message content.

Then, Yahoo announced that it provided the government communications content from between 30,000 and 31,000 accounts within the same period, and up to 1,000 customer accounts that were subject to Fisa court orders for metadata.
Finally, Facebook revealed that it turned over content data from up to 6,000 accounts and customer metadata associated with up to 1,000 accounts.

Aside from this data, the tech giants had to give the FBI certain customer records (not content) under a subpoena known as a national security letter.