Facebook Sues FISA Over Data Requests
on Monday joined an effort to press the U.S. into lifting a gag order that prevents companies from disclosing how they deal with government demands for user data.
The social network is bringing a lawsuit against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, following in the footsteps of Google Yahoo and Microsoft which brought their own separate lawsuits in June.
In a post on the company’s website, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch wrote, “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.”
*Facebook didn’t say why the company chose to bring a lawsuit three months after the others, and didn’t immediately comment beyond what was said in its blog post.
Google wants to separate national security requests from requests made by other law enforcement agencies, a spokeswoman said. It also wants to publish numbers of requests twice a year and it wants FISA court oral arguments to be made public. In a statement on its website Monday, Google said, “The levels of secrecy that have built up around national security requests undermine the basic freedoms that are at the heart of a democratic society.”
Ever since revelations of the National Security Agency’s massive spying program, tech giants have argued that the government should allow them to divulge more details about how they comply with government requests for consumer information."
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/09/facebook-sues-fisa-over-data-requests/
