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from the we-can't-tell-you-what-we-can't-tell-you dept.
Google has published some of the National Security Letters (NSLs) it has received from the FBI:
Google is providing for the first time a look into the world of national security letters -- demands from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to hand over details about account holders and keep quiet about it.
The letters are a part of business for Google and other major internet companies, but traditionally they have been barred from acknowledging the letters' existence. That changed in 2013 when, in light of revelations about Internet surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies, Google and others started fighting to disclose more about the demands.
That led to the creation of Google's "transparency report," which revealed the company receives thousands of requests for user data each month from law enforcement agencies around the globe. The national security letters remained secret, but on Tuesday, Google published a handful that are no longer covered by nondisclosure rules.
Google has redacted the email addresses of the users targeted as well as the names of the FBI employees who made the requests, so don't expect anything exciting in the letters.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 15 2016, @04:39AM
So, they have disclosed 8 letters, covering a period of five years. That doesn't sound like much, really. Those numbers almost seem to legitimize the inquiries. But, how many letters are NOT being disclosed? 10, 100, 1000, or tens of thousands? It seems that I read something about thousands of accounts, but can't remember what time period those requests covered.
Oh - from TFA: "the company receives thousands of requests for user data each month from law enforcement agencies around the globe." But, that's "around the globe", and presumably, not all requests are covered by US law.
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/ [google.com]
So, the number (from around the globe) has grown from ~12,500 in 2009, to 45,000 in 2015. And, Google complies with ~75% of those requests.
But that page is a little bit confusing. I'm color blind - am I missing some color thingy? Or, are those numbers for six month periods, rather than a year?
"For example, starting with the July–December 2010 reporting period, we began to disclose the percentages of user data requests we comply with in whole or in part. And starting with the January–June 2011 reporting period, we began to disclose the number of users or accounts about which data was requested."
Six month reporting periods, so roughly double those numbers for the whole year . . . .
Adding numbers up, I find that there have been ~236,000 requsts for the years 2013 to 2015. And, eight of those requests have been publicized.
People, that's one hell of a lot of terrorists.
Alright, to be fair, those are global numbers. Maybe only half, or only a quarter, of those requests come from the US government. Still, that's a lot of investigations, and we are only getting 8 letters here.
Can anyone find better numbers, or more meaningful numbers, than I have found?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday December 15 2016, @10:48AM
This is a transparency report. If you cannot see something, it's because it's 100% transparent, also known as invisible. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.