FISA Data Release by Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft Means Squat
Google, Yahoo, and other tech firms are offering some updated statistics about government requests for data. There’s just one problem: under revised guidelines issued by the federal government, those companies can still only report a range, rather than a definitive number, for those requests. If that wasn’t fuzzy enough, the range can only be reported after a six-month lag. “Until now, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) opposed our efforts to publish statistics specifically about Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests,” reads a Feb. 3 note on Google’s official blog. Last year, Google and other tech firms filed a lawsuit asking the FISA court to cough up more data about information requests. “Today, for the first time, our report on government requests for user information encompasses all of the requests we receive, subject only to delays imposed by the DoJ regarding how quickly we can include certain requests in our statistics.” Between January and June 2013, Google received between 0-999 FISA “non-content” requests on 0-999 user accounts; it also fielded between 0-999 “content” requests for between 9000 and 9999 user accounts: