Google Asks Government For More Transparency, Other Groups Push Back Against NSA

Nerval's Lobster writes "In an open letter addressed to U.S. attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller, Google chief legal officer David Drummond again insisted that reports of his company freely offering user data to the NSA and other agencies were untrue. 'However,' he wrote, 'government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.' In light of that, Drummond had a request of the two men: 'We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope.' Apparently Google's numbers would show 'that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made.' Google, Drummond added, 'has nothing to hide.'" Another open letter was sent to Congress from a variety of internet companies and civil liberties groups (headlined by Mozilla, the EFF, the ACLU, and the FSF), asking them to enact legislation to prohibit the kind of surveillance apparently going on at the NSA and to hold accountable the people who implemented it. (A bipartisan group of senators has just come forth with legislation that would end such surveillance.) In addition to the letter, the ACLU sent a lawsuit as well, directed at President Obama, Eric Holder, the NSA, Verizon and the Dept. of Justice (filing, PDF). They've also asked (PDF) for a release of court records relevant to the scandal. Mozilla has also launched Stopwatching.us, a campaign to "demand a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored." Other reactions: Tim Berners-Lee is against it, Australia's Foreign Minister doesn't mind it, the European Parliament has denounced it, and John Oliver is hilarious about it (video). Meanwhile, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked the information about the NSA's surveillance program, is being praised widely as a hero and a patriot. There's already a petition on Whitehouse.gov to pardon him for his involvement, and it's already reached half the required number of signatures for a response from the Obama administration.

Comments

It should be illegal but isn't, that's the problem

[Faizdog]

One of the best comments was from John Oliver on the Daily Show. In response to Obama's defense that there is the FISA court overseeing this and that member's of congress are briefed, he said great, so it's not just one branch of government acting improperly, all 3 are! That's supposed to be better (me paraphrasing). It's not that these programs aren't illegal, it's the very fact that they aren't that's a problem! (Or aren't considered illegal by the government, many would argue they are illegal in sight of the Constitution).

I'm usually a big government, bleeding heart liberal, but not in the areas of governmental police powers (monitoring citizens, etc). Basically, if the government is helping it's citizens, I support that (healthcare, etc) but if it's looking at it's citizens to protect itself, I don't like that at all.

Here are 2 quotes that were on /. yesterday:
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government."
-Patrick Henry

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."
Patrick Henry

Re:innocents will suffer the most

[meta-monkey]

Also, I'm sick of the word "snooping." This is not snooping.

Snooping is what you do when you're 8 and you look in your parents' closet for your Christmas presents.

Snooping is what you do when you ask around if the cute girl in school has a boyfriend and if she just "likes" you or if she "like likes" you.

This is spying. This is invading. This is tracking, watching, monitoring, recording everything you, your mom and your kid sister do and storing it forever.

And what's scarier than that revelation? CNN. I always knew the media in the US was "US centric." The reporters are Americans, so of course they're going to be more forgiving of stuff the government does to foreigners. But I rejected the "conspiracy theory" that what they report is dictated by the government, as they're for-profit companies. And they're lazy, so the horse race, talking heads reporting was just what lazy companies do.

But that's not the case here. If they're just lazy...fuck, this should be easy. Massive government scandal. McCarthy/Watergate/Pentagon Papers all rolled into one. A reporter and a news agency could make a career, an empire out of this! Don't journalism students want to be Bob Woodward?

And what's on the front page of CNN right now? I just looked. A picture of George W. Bush and a headline "Miss me yet?" about a poll. Another story "Second term blues for Obama." The same "hero or traitor?" op-ed everybody else has wherein "security experts" call him a traitor and then they find misspelled quotes from stoners about him, like, tellin' off the man and stuff, man.

"Hero or traitor? Who can say!" Ummmmm...you can, CNN. That's your fucking job. It is literally the divide and conquer bullshit from Goebbels. Confirmation that both parties are totally fine with spying on every American citizen, and that's "second term blues?" SECOND TERM BLUES?! Completely unconscionable, unconstitutional, straight-up evil actions at the highest levels of the land, and that's "the blues?" No, CNN, that's not the blues. "Aw, shucks, I missed the bus and spilled coffee on my shirt" is the blues. This shit...this shit is not the blues. And the cure for the blues is the poll on the other story about electing a Republican next time, because that'll fix it, right?

They're really complicit in feeding the red vs blue bullshit machine, when it would be easier, and more profitable to investigate the whole system.

My dad always told me, "never attribute to malice what's just as likely ignorance." I thought CNN and the MSM were just lazy and inept, but...this isn't lazy or inept. This is directed. There's no other explanation.

I want my mommy.