Apple, Facebook, others defy authorities, notify users of secret data demands
Source: Washington Post
Major U.S. technology companies have largely ended the practice of quietly complying with investigators demands for e-mail records and other online data, saying that users have a right to know in advance when their information is targeted for government seizure.
This increasingly defiant industry stand is giving some of the tens of thousands of Americans whose Internet data gets swept into criminal investigations each year the opportunity to fight in court to prevent disclosures. Prosecutors, however, warn that tech companies may undermine cases by tipping off criminals, giving them time to destroy vital electronic evidence before it can be gathered.
Fueling the shift is the industrys eagerness to distance itself from the government after last years disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance of online services. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google all are updating their policies to expand routine notification of users about government data seizures, unless specifically gagged by a judge or other legal authority, officials at all four companies said. Yahoo announced similar changes in July.
As this position becomes uniform across the industry, U.S. tech companies will ignore the instructions stamped on the fronts of subpoenas urging them not to alert subjects about data requests, industry lawyers say. Companies that already routinely notify users have found that investigators often drop data demands to avoid having suspects learn of inquiries.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/apple-facebook-others-defy-authorities-increasingly-notify-users-of-secret-data-demands-after-snowden-revelations/2014/05/01/b41539c6-cfd1-11e3-b812-0c92213941f4_story.html?hpid=z1
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Are these companies still PRISIM participants?
cprise
(8,445 posts)The Government is Silencing Twitter and Yahoo, and It Won't Tell Us Why
By Bennett Stein, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at 10:07am
The government is using shaky legal arguments to silence major Internet companies without giving them or the public the opportunity to respond. In three separate recent cases, the government has sent a grand jury subpoena to Yahoo or Twitter and requested a gag order from a magistrate judge, attempting to bar these tech companies from informing the customers in question. To make matters worse, the government won't disclose its reasoning for requesting the gag, effectively shutting the public out of the courthouse without any explanation.
The ACLU filed a motion last night seeking to represent the public's interest in open court proceedings when the government seeks gag orders on Internet companies. We know about the three cases only because the magistrate judge pushed back on the government, inviting Yahoo and Twitter to weigh in and ordering the government to make its legal arguments public. The government appealed those orders to a district court, where the judge ordered the appeals sealed. The ACLU is now moving to intervene in the district court for the purpose of opening these gag order proceedings to public scrutiny. In a democracy, if your government is going to gag someone from speaking, it should publicly explain why.
more... https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security-free-speech/government-silencing-twitter-and-yahoo-and
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)produce a VALID search warrant signed by a judge, not a security letter signed by a bureaucrat.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)The companies could just lie.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)2banon
(7,321 posts)Nothing more than a PR campaign covering their collective-corrupted asses to quell concerns, however slight, tech-toys addicted consumers might have in protecting their privacy rights.
Hestia
(3,818 posts)would ever dream of, well, actually it seems the government pays them to data mine us to the womb. It behooves them to make out like they are fighting the man, when, actually they are the man. I seriously doubt the altruistic reasons behind this.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Yahoo can't deny you an airplane seat. Or food stamps, or anything except yahoo's stuff. Yahoo is not the man.