“Google is asking the government to allow it to release more information about how many national security requests it received as part of an effort to improve the company’s record on privacy issues, which it says has been damaged by recent press reports,” Abby D. Phillip reports for ABC News.
“‘Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue. However, government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation,’ Google’s chief legal officer, Lee Drummond, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller,” Phillip reports. “The letter comes after two stories in the Guardian and the Washington Post suggested that a National Security Agency program, code-named PRISM, gave the government “direct access” to the servers of several internet companies, including Google.”
Phillip reports, “This latest letter turns the onus back to the government to be more clear about what the companies’ roles have actually been in the PRISM program.”
Read more in the full article here.
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