Kim Zetter got a great scoop today: Google does not participate in any government program involving a lockbox or other equipment installed at its facilities to transfer court-ordered data to the government, a company spokesman says, refuting with some finality one of the lingering theories about the NSA’s PRISM program. Instead the company transmits FISA…
Category: U.S.
… and Facebook piles on
Statement from Facebook General Counsel Ted Ullyot: As Mark said last week, we strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. In the past, we have questioned the value of releasing a transparency report that, because of exactly these types of government restrictions on disclosure,…
ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging NSA’s Patriot Act Phone Surveillance
From the ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a constitutional challenge to a surveillance program under which the National Security Agency vacuums up information about every phone call placed within, from, or to the United States. The lawsuit argues that the program violates the First Amendment…
How Regulators Enticed Verizon to Sell Out Customers to the NSA
Ira Stoll reports: Verizon, the phone company whose disclosure of customer data to the federal government is at the center of the furor over cooperation by technology companies with top-secret national security programs, has offered a precise, clear, but little-noticed public explanation of why it did what it did. The Verizon explanation is not in…