On Thursday AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo formed the “Reform Government Surveillance” coalition, motivated to influence policy in the nation’s capital.
According to the RT new coalition hired Monument Policy Group, which has previously worked with Microsoft and LinkedIn, to handle the lobbying operations.
After the beginning of spying revelations supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden the companies often chose to stay quiet about desired reforms, if they weren’t already forced to by the US, as has been the case with transparency efforts.
Late June, the US Department of Justice relented, albeit in a modest manner, to tech companies’ requests to reveal more information about how much data is demanded of them by government surveillance operations.
The companies will now be able to report on national security letters - in which information is demanded independent of court authority - as well as requests ordered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.
Yet how they report will be limited to broad numerical ranges on the volume of orders and the number of accounts affected.
Countries overseas, especially in Europe, have floated the idea of demanding tech companies be subject to new counter-NSA privacy rules that would require them have servers within a country’s border in order to supply services there.
On Thursday, Twitter slammed the US for its transparency practices despite the new opportunities afforded the tech companies in revealing how often they are asked to comply with government surveillance efforts. It called the Justice Department’s offer a violation of First Amendment rights.
“Allowing Twitter, or any other similarly situated company, to only disclose national security requests within an overly broad range seriously undermines the objective of transparency,” Jeremy Kessel, Twitter’s Global Legal Policy manager wrote in a blog post.
The companies’ efforts to boost transparency may come just in time, as the Washington Post reported Thursday that the NSA is seeking to expand court orders to compel wireless phone companies that currently do not offer the government its records to now do so, anonymous US officials said.
Source :: http://rt.com/
According to the RT new coalition hired Monument Policy Group, which has previously worked with Microsoft and LinkedIn, to handle the lobbying operations.
After the beginning of spying revelations supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden the companies often chose to stay quiet about desired reforms, if they weren’t already forced to by the US, as has been the case with transparency efforts.
Late June, the US Department of Justice relented, albeit in a modest manner, to tech companies’ requests to reveal more information about how much data is demanded of them by government surveillance operations.
The companies will now be able to report on national security letters - in which information is demanded independent of court authority - as well as requests ordered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.
Yet how they report will be limited to broad numerical ranges on the volume of orders and the number of accounts affected.
Countries overseas, especially in Europe, have floated the idea of demanding tech companies be subject to new counter-NSA privacy rules that would require them have servers within a country’s border in order to supply services there.
On Thursday, Twitter slammed the US for its transparency practices despite the new opportunities afforded the tech companies in revealing how often they are asked to comply with government surveillance efforts. It called the Justice Department’s offer a violation of First Amendment rights.
“Allowing Twitter, or any other similarly situated company, to only disclose national security requests within an overly broad range seriously undermines the objective of transparency,” Jeremy Kessel, Twitter’s Global Legal Policy manager wrote in a blog post.
The companies’ efforts to boost transparency may come just in time, as the Washington Post reported Thursday that the NSA is seeking to expand court orders to compel wireless phone companies that currently do not offer the government its records to now do so, anonymous US officials said.
Source :: http://rt.com/
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