Google slams US for restricting its biannual Transparency Report

Google has publicly slammed US authorities for preventing it from providing the public with full disclosure in its biannual transparency report.

Since 2010 Google has released figures every six months on how many government requests for personal data it receives, and this year it has attempted to add to that transparency by breaking down US figures even further. Those attempts, however, have been partially thwarted by the government, which is refusing to allow Google to divulge  requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act.

The new breakdown shows the types of legal requests Google receives, from National Security Letters (requests by the FBI that require US companies to deliver "the name, address, length of service, and local and long distance toll billing records" of users for use in national security investigations) to criminal requests -- that includes things like warrants, court orders and subpoenas to get information related to a criminal investigation. National Security Letters do not require court orders. What's missing from the report, however, is data on requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act (FISA). This is a court order that compels US companies to deliver personal data in national security investigations. Presumably this means much more detailed data, beyond "the name, address, length of service" stats the National Security Letters demand. 

"The US government argues that we cannot share information about the requests we receive (if any) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But you deserve to know," writes Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security at Google in a blog post. "Earlier this year, we brought a federal case to assert that we do indeed have the right to shine more light on the FISA process."

Salgado also pointed to Google's support for two bits of legislation being proposed in Congress. The company, along with the likes of Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter, Yahoo, Apple, AOL and many more, cosigned a letter of support in September for the Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013 and the Surveillance Order Reporting Act of 2013. The acts would dictate that companies "have the right to publish basic statistics about the government demands for user data that they receive".

In the aftermath of the NSA revelations, tech giants including Google have gone to great pains to defend themselves and insist all actions they took, they were compelled to take. Being a US company, Google does not have the same kind of breakdown of other countries' legal requests, but takes the opportunity in the current blog post to urge for international unity when it comes to transparency.

"We're asking governments around the world to uphold international legal agreements that respect the laws of different countries and guarantee standards for due process are met."

"We believe it's your right to know what kinds of requests and how many each government is making of us and other companies… Our promise to you is to continue to make this report robust, to defend your information from overly broad government requests, and to push for greater transparency around the world."

The January report revealed that the US took a dramatic lead among international players with 8,438 requests for information made about 14,791 users in the second half of 2012. The latest report reveals that figure has now risen to 10,918 requests on 21,683 users, with Google passing on data 83 percent of the time. Data was handed over by Google more frequently in US cases than in any other country. Once again, India comes in at second place with 2,691 requests and information handed over in 64 percent of those cases.

The difference between first and second place is staggering. But on looking at rudimentary population statistics it starts to make a little more sense. India's population is more than 1.2 billion, compared to over 310 million in the US. However, in the US 191.4 million of those people are onlin e versus 73.9 millions users in India. So, though the US made about four times as many requests as India, it has about three times more people online. There's still a huge disparity, but it's a little less shocking.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/15/google-transparency-report