Google’s latest “transparency report” for the first time segments U.S. government...
Google’s latest “transparency report” for the first time segments U.S. government requests for user data by the legal process used “when compelling communications and technology companies to hand over user data,” said Richard Salgado, legal director for law enforcement and…
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information security. His blog post (http://bit.ly/10IAoK6) announced the half-year report (http://bit.ly/K14OhJ). Two-thirds of U.S. requests came through subpoenas issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and “are the easiest to get because they typically don’t involve judges,” Salgado said. One in five came through ECPA search warrants, which are “generally” issued by judges based on a probable-cause demonstration that “information related to a crime” is available in the search target, he said. The rest were “mostly court orders issued under ECPA by judges or other processes that are difficult to categorize,” Salgado said. Google received 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 users July-December 2012 worldwide, a 70 percent increase since the company started publishing numbers on requests in 2009, he said. The new report doesn’t include information on content removals as past reports have because Google will release those numbers separately in the future, he said. Advocacy groups pounced on particular parts of the report. TechFreedom President Berin Szoka pointed to a “disturbing growth in government surveillance online,” in an email blast. It’s “even more disturbing” that the vast majority of requests don’t require a court order to obtain information and ensure that the government has shown probable cause “to believe a crime has actually been committed,” Szoka said. Because Google doesn’t distinguish between subpoenas “properly issued” for basic information and those issued improperly for things like email text, the report “doesn’t really tell us the full extent of unconstitutional privacy invasions” or confirm law-enforcement claims that they are getting warrants for content information even when not required, he said. Congress -- and the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in particular -- should reform ECPA “immediately” to ensure that “smaller companies without legal staffs” aren’t turning over user information wholesale without proper authorization, Szoka said. Privacy International pointed to Google’s stats on European Union member countries’ requests for information, in another email blast: 7,254 requests about 9,240 users during the period, which PI called a “100% increase over the past three years.” The numbers shine a harsh light on improper requests, PI said: Italy, Spain, France and Germany got less than half their requests “fully or partially fulfilled,” and only 17 percent of Poland’s requests were fulfilled. The “alarming statistics” justify the work PI is doing with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other organizations to “soon” publish a set of “International Principles on Communications Surveillance and Human Rights,” said Carly Nyst, PI head of international advocacy.