In case you’ve been living under a rock, or protecting your thoughts with a tinfoil hat, there’s been tons of talk lately about the NSA, and government spying in on our calls and more. Between the Verizon NSA news and the so-called PRISM scandal, this has been a hot topic. Google’s CEO shared some thoughts last week, and now we’re getting details about their upcoming plans for transparency in general.
After all the pushback from customers, many companies have been outing details about just how much the government requests. In an attempt to ease the minds of their users. The discussion about FISA requests isn’t going anywhere, and this news will continue to be a trend until some policies see changes. At least that’s what many are hoping for.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has done a lot of good, but were not here to discuss or argue that. Instead, today Google has confirmed their new approach and request as to how they share these details, and are focusing on even more transparency. Google has petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts with a request to let them publish all these requests separately. Allowing for more transparency.
They confirmed the details with a quick statement over on Google+, and we’ll have to wait and see how things go. Google would like to publish the FISA requests all in aggregated numbers. National security requests, including FISA disclosures, and criminal requests should all be disclosed separately. Instead of lumping them together in one huge report where important aspects can get lost or overlooked.
I try not to stick my nose into all of this too much, especially given the heated nature of these debates, but figured an update was in order. This is certainly a step in the right direction from Google, and hopefully others follow suite and opt to be more transparent moving forward.
VIA: Google
