Following the Snowden leaks, the FBI allowed communications providers to report in a limited way the number of orders for data they received from the government and the number of accounts affected by such orders. However, the FBI only agreed to disclosure of a single, aggregate number of criminal and national security-related orders to the companies from all U.S. governmental entities, plus local and state entities.
Under the compromise announced Monday, Internet companies will be able to release more information, but still only in very general terms when it comes to national security investigations. They can report the number of criminal-related orders from the government. They also will be able to release, rounded to the nearest thousand, the number of secret national security-related orders from government investigators; the number of national security-related orders from the FISA court, and the number of customers affected by both. In the FISA orders, the companies will be able to say the number of requests for personal information about their customers versus their actual e-mails.
The companies can also choose a simplified reporting process that allows them to report the number of criminal-related orders, and then national security or intelligence orders in increments of 250 and the total number of customers targeted, also in groups of 250.
"These new reporting methods enable communications providers to make public more information than ever before about the orders that they have received to provide data to the government," Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole said in a letter to the five Internet companies.
The companies will have to delay releasing the number of national security orders by six months. They also had to promise that if they come up with new technology or new forms of communication, they are not able to reveal that the government can tap into that new technology for two years.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief supporting the tech firms in their bid to disclose more information, said Monday that the deal "partially" lifted an information gag on the companies. But the group praised the agreement as "a victory for transparency."
Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the ACLU's National Security Project, said: "It is commendable that the companies pressed the government for more openness, but even more is needed. Congress should require the government to publish basic information about the full extent of its surveillance."
