Tag Archives: NSA

When it comes to PRISM, whither Twitter? #mumstheword


By SB Anderson
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo visits with ASNE in Washington

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo visits with ASNE in Washington (Photo from C-SPAN video).

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo joined us for lunch on Wednesday at the American Society of News Editors conference in Washington and talked about journalism and its intersection with Twitter (and vice-versa); his company and its culture; privacy; and a few other topics.

But when it came to one hot topic in DC of late and  why Twitter wasn’t included on the now-famous PowerPoint slide about companies the NSA has relationships with for the top-secret PRISM user data collection program, Costolo pretty much had precisely 140 characters of nothing specific to say. With a hashtag of #mumstheword.

Asked  by Marty Baron of the Washington Post whether Twitter was “invited or instructed by the federal government to participate in this program, whether you chose to turn the government down, and if you did that based on legal objections, what were those legal objections,” Costolo wouldn’t take the bait.

He did, however, say Twitter is very aggressive and takes a “principled approach” when it comes to pushing back against government requests for large amounts of user data.

“When we get specific, pointed legal requests that are legally valid. . . we respond to them,” he said in reply to Baron’s question. “When we receive general requests that we feel are overly broad, not valid legal requests, we push back on those. I think it’s fair to say as has been reported in other cases like Wikileaks, we will spend time and energy and money to defend out users’ rights to be informed about the information that is being requested about them. . . That’s really all i can say about it.”

Earlier in his visit, interviewer Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post said, “It feels like we’re sort of dancing around this thing that’s all in caps called PRISM. You can’t talk so much about it.  . . .  Does it bother you you can’t talk more about your relationship with the government and these sorts of requests?”

His repsonse was much the same as what he told Baron.

He did note that he has talked publicly about a rule in the UK that makes it illegal to even disclose there’s an injunction in some situations, and called such rules “Kafkaesque. . . . Those kinds of things are generally disturbing and we have called for and would love to see more transparency around these types of requests.”

I’ve extracted the PRISM-related discussion from the hourlong Costolo chat (but the content isn’t available yet for embedding). View it here:

Google’s 1st Amendment lawsuit seeking public FISA data release


By SB Anderson

Here’s the motion that Google filed today with the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court saying it has a First Amendment right to release aggregate data on the number of requests it receives from the court for data and the number of accounts or users affected. It already releases similar details in its regular “transparency reports” about National Security Letter requests from the FBI.

“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 petition says, referring to stories in the Guardian and Washington Post about the NSA’s PRISM program involving major online companies. “Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities. Moreover, these are matters of significant weight and importance, and transparency is critical to advancing public debate in a thoughtful and democratic manner.”

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – Motion for Declaratory Judgment by Liz Gannes of All Things D.

Most recent tallies of data and user requests authorities have made of online companies


By SB Anderson

Below is a summary of the latest data provided by the major online companies about how many requests they’d received from U.S. law enforcement agencies for user information. Google, Microsoft and most recently Twitter had regularly been releasing “transparency reports” with such data; Apple, Facebook and Yahoo released general data in recent weeks in response to the controversy over National Security Agency monitoring activities. Sources for each company are listed at the bottom.

COMPANY TIME PERIOD REQUESTS ACCOUNTS NOTES
APPLE 12/1/2012 to 5/31/2013 4,000-5,000 9,000-10,000 From federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters. The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide.
FACEBOOK 7/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 9,000-10,000 18,000-19,000 From any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests). These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat.
GOOGLE 7/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 8,438 14,791 Via Google Transparency Report. 69% from subpoena; 22% search warrant; 9% other, including court orders. Google is among the most forthcoming in details on government requests.
GOOGLE (NSL) 2012 0-999 1000–1999 Google is among a few who release National Security Letters data. The data can only legally be released in aggregate tiers of 999.
MICROSOFT 7/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 6,000-7,000 31,000-32,000 Criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders from U.S. governmental entities (including local, state and federal). Microsoft had been releasing regular transparency data, along with Google and most recently, Twitter.
MICROSOFT (NSL) 2012 0-999 1000–1999 Microsoft, like Google, releases annual data on National Security Letters. The data can only legally be released in aggregate tiers of 999.
TWITTER 7/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 815 1,145 Via Twitter Transparency report. 60% from subpoenas; 19% warrants; 11% court order.
YAHOO 12/1/2012 to 5/31/2013 12,000-13,000 N/A Includes criminal, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and other requests. The most common of these requests concerned fraud, homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations.

Compiled by On the Beat from company releases.

SOURCES