Google has begun including information about the number of national...
Google has begun including information about the number of national security letters (NSLs) it receives from the FBI, requesting information about the company’s users, every year in its annual Transparency Report, the company said Tuesday in a blog post by…
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Richard Salgado, Google legal director of law enforcement and information security (http://bit.ly/Yb2yHg). “The FBI has the authority to prohibit companies from talking about these requests. But we've been trying to find a way to provide more information about the NSLs we get,” he wrote. Google will report NSL numbers “in broad strokes” -- data for 2009 through 2012 is in increments of 1,000 -- “to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations,” Salgado said. There have been between zero and 999 NSLs every year since 2009, according to the report (http://bit.ly/MTrIHh); between 1,000 and 1,999 users/accounts were specified each year, except for 2010, when between 2,000 and 2,999 users/accounts were specified.