Internet majors disclose secret US demands for data

Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google yesterday started publishing details of the number of secret government requests for data they received, even as they hoped to show minimal involvement in controversial US surveillance efforts.

The tech industry is pushing for greater transparency on government data requests, as it seeks to address concerns about its involvement in vast, surreptitious surveillance programmes that came to light last summer with disclosures by former spy contractor Edward Snowden.

The government said last month that it would relax rules restricting what details companies could disclose about Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders they received for user information.

Several companies, including Google and Microsoft, approached the courts against the government last year, seeking the right to disclose more of that data.

Reuters quoted Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith as saying  that the latest data showed that the information the government had asked online companies to turn over, had not been as vast as some feared.

He added that the company had not received the type of bulk data requests that were commonly discussed publicly regarding telephone records.

Smith added this was a point the company had been publicly making in a generalised way since last summer, and it was good finally to have the ability to share concrete data.

According to the companies the numbers represented a small fraction of their hundreds of millions of users, and included many cases in which a single individual held multiple accounts.

The new reports have been allowed under a legal settlement reached following several companies suing the government to loosen the rules that prevented them from disclosing such demands in the past.

San Jose Mercury News reports, companies were earlier allowed to report on certain types of requests, which included those known as National Security Letters, but not demands issued under the FISA law.

However, even under the new arrangement, companies are required to describe the requests in broad categories and report the numbers in ranges of 1,000.

Also the reports, do not give the whole picture of government surveillance, Smith acknowledged in a blog post yesterday.

"Nothing in today's report minimizes the significance of efforts by governments to obtain customer data outside legal process," Smith wrote.

He cited news reports about government efforts to hack into the data cables between some companies' computer centres, adding, "this has been and remains a major concern across the tech sector."

In a separate statement, Google legal director Richard Salgado said Google would continue urging Congress to enact new rules that would allow companies to report in more detail, and also require the government to issue its own public reports about surveillance efforts.