Yahoo and Facebook Join Google In FISC Petition After Government Talks Fail

msm1267 writes "Google, Yahoo and Facebook filed amended requests today with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reiterating their desire to publish numbers on requests for user data related to national security. Google, meanwhile, went a step further asking for an open, public hearing with the court so that the issue could be publicly debated." Statements from Yahoo's general counsel (filed motion [PDF]) and Facebook's general counsel (filed motion [PDF]). According to Facebook, "In recent weeks, it has become clear that the dialogue with the U.S. government that produced some additional transparency at the outset is at this point unlikely to result in more progress. As a result, today we are joining others in the industry in petitioning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to require the government to permit companies to disclose more information about the volume and types of national security-related orders they receive."

Comments

You know that things are bad...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

When Google, Yahoo, and Facebook join together to assert that the state of surveillance on the internet is out of hand, you know you are totally fucked.

It's like having the horsemen of the apocalypse criticizing your policy decisions.

I am a Chinese, and an American !

[Taco Cowboy]

But if you're chinese in china, how (aside from being a rich oligarch) are you going to use the internet at all without a firewall?

How disingenuous you want to become ?

I am a Chinese and I am an American citizen, and I do have business in China, and yes, I sometime find myself INSIDE CHINA.

But the key point is NOT what's happening in China - for China, at least, up to now, NEVER PRETEND TO BE A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY.

China never, at least not to my knowledge, use "human rights", "democracy", "equality" and all those shit, as "weapons of publicity" to shame other countries.

On the other hand, my country, the United States of America, has been doing just that, for at least the past 5 decades.

The United States has criticized other countries, from Russia to China to Sudan to North Korea for their lack of "democracy", "human rights", "equality" (not that those countries don't deserved to be criticized") but I find it utterly hypocritical for the United States, and for YOU, to use China as the RED HERRING to shore up your inane argument FOR the current repressive government of the United States of America.