Google files First Amendment case against NSA
Posted by: Jon on 06/19/2013 07:20 AM
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Google filed a First Amendment plea that would allow them to disclose the overall scope of the Prism surveillance program to the public, and also for the ability to share the number of user accounts associated with those secret data requests.
The petition comes less than two weeks after The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed a National Security Agency surveillance program known as Prism. Leaked documents said the NSA has been monitoring data from nine major U.S. companies, including Google, Apple, and Microsoft, in an effort to gather data on foreign intelligence targets.
Google claims that those and other reports about Prism were "misleading" and "mischaracterized the scope" of the program -- specifically, that they misled the public to believe that the government has carte blanche to snoop on its users. The company has publicly denied that the government has the ability to tap directly into its servers, and Google says it wants to clear the record about the scope of such requests.
"Google's reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in the media, and Google's users are concerned by the allegations," the company said in its filing. "Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities."
The U.S. Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative for the NSA pointed to previously published statements about Prism, but would not comment on Google's petition specifically.
For the past several years, Google has published a "transparency report" that includes the number of user data requests it receives from government agencies as a whole. But the company wants to get more specific by breaking out "aggregate numbers of national security requests" separately.
"Lumping national security requests together with criminal requests would be a backward step for Google and our users," a Google spokeswoman said in a statement
The petition comes less than two weeks after The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed a National Security Agency surveillance program known as Prism. Leaked documents said the NSA has been monitoring data from nine major U.S. companies, including Google, Apple, and Microsoft, in an effort to gather data on foreign intelligence targets.
Google claims that those and other reports about Prism were "misleading" and "mischaracterized the scope" of the program -- specifically, that they misled the public to believe that the government has carte blanche to snoop on its users. The company has publicly denied that the government has the ability to tap directly into its servers, and Google says it wants to clear the record about the scope of such requests.
"Google's reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in the media, and Google's users are concerned by the allegations," the company said in its filing. "Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities."
The U.S. Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative for the NSA pointed to previously published statements about Prism, but would not comment on Google's petition specifically.
For the past several years, Google has published a "transparency report" that includes the number of user data requests it receives from government agencies as a whole. But the company wants to get more specific by breaking out "aggregate numbers of national security requests" separately.
"Lumping national security requests together with criminal requests would be a backward step for Google and our users," a Google spokeswoman said in a statement
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