Verizon Finally Releases Transparency Report Showing Many Requests, But Scale Of Those Requests Is Missing
from the details-please dept
After quite a lot of pressure, both Verizon and AT&T agreed last month to issue transparency reports like those that Google has offered for years, and which most of the other large internet companies have started offering in the last year or two. Verizon released its first one today, showing that it's pretty busy handling government requests. These are the numbers from 2013:- Suboenas: 164,184
- General court orders: 62,857
- Pen Registers/Trap & Trace: 6,312
- Wiretap orders: 1,496
- Warrants: 36,696
- "Emergency requests" from law enforcement: ~50,000
- National Security Letters (NSLs): between 1,000 and 1,999
Of course, what this leaves out may be more interesting than what's included. While it lists the numbers for these requests, it gives no indication how many of its users are targeted. A single subpoena could, for example, request information on everyone. While that may be an extreme example, the point is that the number of requests doesn't really tell you very much overall. Or, perhaps not an extreme example. This report doesn't show, for example, what Verizon hands over under orders from the FISC under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. We already know that Section 215 has resulted in FISA orders for metadata on every Verizon mobile phone customers. That's probably counted as one single "court order" in that big list above. Similarly, as has been revealed in the past, the NSA works with telcos to directly tap the internet backbone for information. Where is that included in the list above?
Point being, this isn't all that "transparent," because bare numbers don't really mean that much.
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Filed Under: government requests, transparency, transparency report, warrants
Companies: verizon
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As a Verizon customer, under duress...
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This is from BS dept.
What kind of journmalism is that?:
"Verizon Finally Releases Transparency Report
[...]Emergency requests" from law enforcement: ~50,000"
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Re:
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Oh, now it's bare numbers don't really mean that much."
Here's related examples -- BOTH of which were censored by the free-thinking, dissent-welcoming, always-polite fanboys here at Techdirt:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131008/12415724799/tech-companies-lawsuit-over-transpar ency-concerning-nsa-surveillance-put-hold-due-to-government-shutdown.shtml#c20
http://www.techdirt.co m/articles/20130909/13290924456/internet-companies-renew-fight-to-publish-data-nsa-requests-1st-amen dment-grounds-say-news-reports-are-false.shtml#c155
"like those that Google has offered for years" -- A subtle promotion for Google by contrast, but as I've said often and according to your last sentence above, Google TOO simply puts out unverifiable meaningless crap.
All the news you saw last week on other sites, re-written to cherry pick points that fit Mike's agenda.
12:36:07[n-297-7]
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Re:
As long as cop comes up with any BS story, it's fine with verizon, which charges $1500 a pop.
That allows to make an extra $3 000 000 a year for nothing.
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The heart of a phone record
I can be willing to bet that they probably do not refuse many of the requests, no matter what the numbers are.
Because they were given retroactive immunity from any kind of punishment by any group for invasion of privacy a long time ago. Why should they care what we think?
It's just metadata, you know.
And that's the scariest part.
Remember that next time you pay your phone bill. Your information is being shared with the feds. Every single bit of it.
Disgusting, isn't it?
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What this all means!
It's a shame those pesky downloaders will have to be carted off to gitmo... to protect 'National Security' and all!
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Verizon does not say how often it refuses to provide information in response to a subpoena.
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