
EFF: Google's Transparency Report does not include FISA court orders - gasull
https://twitter.com/EFF/status/343095933929664513
======
cletus
Can we link the actual source rather than some random tweet?

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/new-statistics-
about-n...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/new-statistics-about-
national-security-letters-google-transparency-report)

~~~
_delirium
The actual content is the bolded "Update 2013-06-07" text at the top here:
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/new-statistics-
about-n...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/new-statistics-about-
national-security-letters-google-transparency-report)

In full:

 _Update 2013-06-07: at the time that we wrote this post [2013-03-06], we
asked Google whether its Transparency Report included data about secret FISA
court orders that would send data to the NSA. The response we received was
extremely vague, but seemed to possibly be "no". In the wake of yesterday's
revelations that the NSA was harvesting data from Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google,
Facebook, AOL, PalTalk, Skype, Youtube and Apple, Google has now clearly
confirmed that the numbers in its Transparency Report do not include the
number of orders or targets for NSA surveillance._

~~~
ralfd
What is it now? "Possibly no" or "clearly no"? I want a source or reading
Googles statement for myself.

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dylangs1030
This makes sense to me. It's highly illegal, to the point of treason and
violating national security, to even acknowledge the existence of a FISA
request, PRISM or otherwise. No one involved in the entire FISA request would
be able to reveal that to even a coworker, let alone the public, under penalty
of 20 years to life in prison.

Furthermore, the NSA strictly forbid employees who complied with FISA requests
to even speak of it to high ranking chief executives. In other words, it's
highly likely even the CEOs didn't know a great extent of the FISA requests
flowing through their networks.

~~~
gasull
They could have worded it as "This report might not include certain requests
whose secrecy is mandated by the law, like FISA requests. Google does not
confirm nor deny having received such requests."

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rasterizer
Isn't it illegal to disclose these?

~~~
sneak
Yes.

However, it's _grossly_ misleading to release aggregate statistics without
even a mention of the fact that, should other avenues of requesting and/or
retrieving data exist, that those are not included in the totals.

It's shady as fuck.

~~~
sjbach
I'm not sure if I can assuage your anger, but the Transparency Report is
upfront that there are reasons not all requests for user data are disclosed.
The data isn't purported to be comprehensive, though we'd like it to be as
comprehensive as possible.

[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/fa...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/faq/)
[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/le...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/legalprocess/)

