CR Team | Monday, 15 June 2015, 12:21 IST
Fremont: Five big time Silicon Valley players, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Facebook took a major stride in the long walk towards greater transparency, since Snowden’s revelations last year. The U.S. Department of Justice and these tech giants have struck a deal which allows companies to disclose details about the number of times the National Security Agency (NSA) had come knocking on their doors for customer data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
“We filed our lawsuits because we believe that the public has a right to know about the volume and types of national security requests we receive. We're pleased the Department of Justice has agreed that we and other providers can disclose this information. While this is a very positive step, we'll continue to encourage Congress to take additional steps to address all of the reforms we believe are needed,” read the joint statement issued by the companies.
According to a Washington Post report, Apple became the first company to exercise these new rules. The company disclosed that it had received less than 249 subpoenas, affecting fewer than 249 accounts, in the first six months of 2013. The reason for Apple’s lack of specificity is the restrictions this new deal brings.
The agreement requires companies to reveal the requests only in groups of 250 or 1,000 and in addition to that, there is also a two-year delay before they can disclose FISA requests related to new products or services the company offers.
Despite the existence of complicated restrictions, this agreement represents a significant milestone in the battle for greater NSA transparency that every major company is rallying for.
