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Why the Latest FISA Release By Google Et Al. Means Squat

Posted by Unknown on from the reading-this-violates-0-to-999-laws dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google, Yahoo, and other tech firms are offering some updated statistics about government requests for data. There's just one problem: under revised guidelines issued by the federal government, those companies can still only report a range, rather than a definitive number, for those requests. If that wasn't fuzzy enough, the range can only be reported after a six-month lag. Between January and June 2013, Google received between 0-999 FISA 'non-content' requests on 0-999 user accounts; it also fielded between 0-999 'content' requests for between 9000 and 9999 user accounts.Yahoo actually received a larger number of FISA queries than Google: for the first six months of 2013, the federal government made between 0-999 requests on between 30,000 and 30,999 user accounts hosted by the company. ... These companies have little choice but to advocate this new information release as a huge step forward for transparency. Unfortunately, restricting government data requests to a broad range isn't very helpful: for example, a range (rather than a single numerical value) makes it difficult to determine trends, such as whether government requests are gradually increasing over the long term."

9 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Classic Slashdot by iONiUM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is off topic, but I'm getting a warning at the top of Slashdot that classic is going to be going away soon (looks like in 4 months).

    How many people will leave if they cut it off completely...?

    1. Re:Classic Slashdot by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously considering it, yes.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    2. Re:Classic Slashdot by JLennox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I do not understand what they're attempting to fix and how they think this new version resolves those issues.

    3. Re:Classic Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I do not understand what they're attempting to fix and how they think this new version resolves those issues.

      The problem: Their hosting costs are too high, caused by too many visitors.
      The answer: Drive the users away.
      ???
      The result: Profit!

    4. Re:Classic Slashdot by neminem · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Presumably like most UI redesigns, they're attempting to fix "looking like they aren't doing anything". The new version fixes that by making it quite clear that they did something. (Like most UI redesigns, "breaking everything horribly" is a pretty good indicator of having done things. Just not *useful* things.)

      As the old saying goes - if it's not broke, fix it 'til it is.

    5. Re:Classic Slashdot by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Agreed, the classic system is IMO the best comment board on the web today. Why not focus on incremental improvements, getting mobile to work properly, etc? Look, I understand that the beta site has been someone's baby for the past couple years but it's just not a step forward from what exists today. Pushing it to all users would be a mistake.

    6. Re:Classic Slashdot by steamraven · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Interestingly, the things they need to fix are not fixed in the Beta: Like Unicode handling. Its not like this is an international site or anything.

    7. Re:Classic Slashdot by iONiUM · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is everyone e-mailing feedback@slashdot.org to tell them? I hope so.

  2. Keep current /. format. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Re: the new one - do not want.