Google Publishes Another Batch Of National Security Letters, Updates Its Transparency Report

from the post-Snowden-landscape dept

Google has released what appears to be its entire collection of National Security Letters to date. Well, at least the entire collection approved for release by the DOJ, which still falls far short of the number received by the search giant.

Liam Tung of ZDNet points to a recent Transparency Report-related blog post by Google, which shows the company is still working to improve its dissemination of materials related to government demands for data and communications.

Since 2010, we’ve shared regular updates in our Transparency Report about the effects of government and corporate policies on users’ data and content. Our goal has always been to make this information as accessible as possible, and to continue expanding this report with new and relevant data.

Today, we’re announcing three updates to our Transparency Report. We’re expanding the National Security Letters (NSL) section, releasing new data on requests from governments to remove content from services like YouTube and Blogger, and making it easier for people to share select data and charts from the Transparency Report.

A new subsection of Google's Transparency Report contains NSLs it's been cleared to publish. This will presumably be updated as gag orders are lifted. Judging from what's published, it's still taking awhile to get gag orders removed. Most of what's contained in Google's NSL document dump was received by the company three to four years ago. Of course, much of this delay can be attributed to a lack of challenge options available to service providers -- something that has improved remarkably since the passage of the USA Freedom Act in 2015.

At this point, challenging gag orders is probably an automated process. If the government continues to hand these out thousands of times a year, it will be forced to review thousands of NSL gag orders within a month of their issuance. Sure, job security is a nice thing, but it seems the DOJ might be better off freeing up some of these resources by issuing NSLs without indefinite gag orders. If the notification ban were limited to 90-180 days on most requests, companies would be unlikely to immediately challenge gag orders, freeing the DOJ from spending time responding to each challenge.

In any event, more transparency is better, especially in Google's case, as it has had very little to say previously about the NSLs it receives.

Filed Under: nastional security letters, nsls, transparency, transparency report
Companies: google