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Comment by gaborcselle | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this is something that Google and Co. will also be allowed to do?

They already do. Google have been publishing statistics and reports about this stuff for a while:

https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/

None of this is relevant though. These are legal requests. The issue that people should remain focused on is whether or not the NSA has illegal, ongoing, unfettered access to wholesale data under PRISM or other programmes.

Google does not publish information about requests which come with a gag order. They were the first to request the ability to publish that data several days ago, followed by Facebook and others shortly after. Facebook is the first to publish updated statistics with the numbers from National Security Letter and FISA warrants included after being granted permission. Google presumably will do so soon as well.

Incorrect. Google disclosed NSL summary stats months ago. As you say, FISA stats are next. I'd expect them this evening.

I stand corrected. They do indeed have the NSL stats, in the somewhat useless 0 – 999 range, here:

https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/U...

Yep, but it was more than any other company in the history of this country has ever disclosed. And give them another 48-72 hours from now to divulge more info.

Oh, I agree. I think it's great they're disclosing what they can and pushing to be able to disclose even more. The "somewhat useless" remark was directed more at the restrictions preventing them from divulging more than at Google themselves.

Google was only allowed to release some of this data. FISA requests were not permitted.

>we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) – which until now no company has been permitted to do.

So, this is a change, albeit still a limited one.

I imagine they're all getting the go-ahead.

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