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Friday, August 30, 2013
by Michael Loatman
Should social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter be permitted to share exactly how many times the U.S. government has made a request for user information because of national security, or is that information too sensitive to be shared with a high level of specificity?
Social media services, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google (which operates Google+ and YouTube), Tumblr, and Reddit, signed a July 18 letter arguing that the services be permitted to provide a greater level of transparency to users.
According to the letter, the U.S. government has sent national security information requests to online services through Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, and various National Security Letter statutes.
When Facebook released its first Global Government Requests Report Aug. 27, it reported a range of 11,000 to 12,000 information requests from the United States government in the first half of 2013. Facebook said it had to report the requests in a range because current U.S. law limited its ability to share information on criminal and national security requests. Facebook listed a specific number of requests for every other country listed on the report.
Twitter released its most recent transparency report on July 31, and it said it was unable to provide the number of national security requests received separately from "non-secret requests." Twitter did provide a specific number of overall information requests from the U.S. government, 902, as opposed to a range like Facebook.
Congress is considering a bill (H.R. 3035), introduced Aug. 2, that would permit companies to reveal information on national security requests with greater specificity.
Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. filed separate lawsuits before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in July that argued the companies had a First Amendment right to publish data on the national security information requests. The Department of Justice has repeatedly requested additional time to respond to the lawsuits, and as of the filing of this blog post, had until today to respond.
Copyright 2013, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.
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