14 DAY TRIAL // Tech companies are taking a stand in front of the United States government and demands an increased transparency regarding the surveillance effort, in light of the PRISM backlash.
Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft are just some of the 63 companies that have signed a letter calling upon the Obama administration to allow Internet, telephone and web service providers to report national security-related requests with greater details, AllThingsD reports.
Yahoo has already asked for the same thing, including the right to disclose details about how they got to join PRISM, while Microsoft has announced yesterday that they wanted permission to publish more information about the requests they get from the authorities.
Now, in the new letter signed by companies, investors, non-profits and trade organizations, they demand the right to report the number of government data requests, the number of individuals, accounts or devices for which the information is requested, and the number of requests seeking communication contents, as well as other details.
Since many companies are already issuing transparency reports, they also demand that the government do the same.
Among those who sign the letter, there are companies such as AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Yahoo, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporters Without Borders and the Wikimedia Foundation.
The requests come after in the past few weeks, ever since it was first revealed that the NSA was spying on everyone, the backlash on the companies working with the intelligence agency has been quite high.
The United States government has already been sued numerous times by more and more entities that decry the general surveillance practiced by the NSA.
All companies that were initially named have denied over and over again “willingly” giving the government “direct access” to their servers.