The Washington Post reports:
Major U.S. technology companies have largely ended the practice of quietly complying with investigators’ demands for e-mail records and other online data, saying that users have a right to know in advance when their information is targeted for government seizure.
The
WaPo report reads like the tech companies will no longer be secretly forking over private citizens' data:
. . . U.S. tech companies will ignore the instructions stamped on the fronts of subpoenas urging them not to alert subjects about data requests, industry lawyers say. Companies that already routinely notify users have found that investigators often drop data demands to avoid having suspects learn of inquiries.
While this step is better than nothing, the devil is always in the details, and the tech companies new-found "strong stance" does not apply to much of NSA's (and the FBI's) mass information-gathering tactics.
The changing tech company policies do not affect data requests approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which are automatically kept secret by law. National security letters, which are administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI for national security investigations, also carry binding gag orders.
The bulk telephony metadata collection program was "approved" by the secret FISA court, which, despite some judicial hand-wringing and well-documented government abuse, still eventually goes along with over 90% of government requests for information. The
FBI has systematically abused its authority to gather information using National Security Letters (NSLs), and steadfastly resists any attempt to challenge them in court.
The exception can swallow the rule. It will not roll back the mass surveillance apparatus to close the front door but leave the windows open. Not to mention the still open back door, where NSA secretly takes individuals' data without permission form the tech companies.
I'm glad to see the tech industry is not so eagerly giving the government customers' private information and spending at least some resources protecting users' privacy rather than lobbying for immunity from anticipated customer lawsuits. (See FISA Amendments Act of 2008). The telecoms ought to be giving rebates and apology letters to the customers' whose private information they so readily handed over to the government.
We can no longer settle for better than nothing when it comes to reining in the surveillance state. Government officials have lied to Congress and the American public about the scope of surveillance and gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and silence whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake and journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. We need to see the tech companies' change in posture for incremental step that it is, and continue to demand surveillance reform in the measure of leaps and bounds, not just baby steps.