“Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft are part of a broad alliance of technology companies and civil liberties groups that will tomorrow demand dramatically increased transparency around U.S. government surveillance efforts,” John Paczkowski reports for AllThingsD.
“In a letter to be published Thursday, the alliance — whose members include 63 companies, investors, non-profits and trade organizations — will call upon President Obama and congressional leaders to allow Internet, telephone, and Web-based service providers to report national security-related requests for information with greater specificity,” Paczkowski reports. “Specifically, they ask that they are allowed to regularly report: The number of government requests for information about their users; The number of individuals, accounts, or devices for which information was requested; The number of requests that sought communications content, basic subscriber information, and/or other information.”
Paczkowski reports, “The letter is perhaps the loudest call yet for greater government disclosure of digital communications monitoring following revelations of a sweeping surveillance program led by the U.S. National Security Agency. Certainly, it’s the most cohesive. It’s signatories are a phalanx of tech companies and civil liberties groups.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Well now, this should be no problem for “the most open and transparent administration in history,” should it?
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759Join The Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for a full congressional investigation here.
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