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Automattic, the company behind content management and blogging platform WordPress, has complained that it can't reveal the full extent of state intelligence agencies' requests to probe users' accounts.
The company's new National Security report reports that the company's recorded zero “national security requests” in 2015's first six months. But the report then offers this observation:
The post goes on to say “By preventing us from sharing a more precise number of requests, the current disclosure rules diminish the trust that our users place in us and our services. For now, we are disclosing the maximum amount of information allowed by law.”
Automattic's unhappy with that so has joined the Twitter-initiated effort (PDF) to get the US attorney-general to change the rules in order to allow more detailed reporting of intelligence agency requests.
That effort could take years to resolve, so until it does it seems safest to assume that even though companies list small quantities of intelligence agency action, the reality may be rather different. ®
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:01AM
If the NSA or whatever 3 letter agency takes your company to court, they gunna have to spill more beans than you did so i doubt they would wanna go that road. also, can you imagine the response from other companies (not to mention the public) to such a case? "authoritarian" would appear in every newspaper.
Maybe they wouldn't take you to court... instead they just "disappear" key personnel working for you, or throw them in a cell at gitmo in the name of "fighting terrorism", but sooner or later the general populous has gotta realize that would basically equate the USA with the Soviet Union.
Something has to eventually give... either you accept the FUD and be a good little soviet, or you stand up for yourselves and expose the "intelligence" apparatus for what it is. I realize it is difficult for a company to accept the risk on its own, so maybe there should be some sort of alliance formed... if one company gets sued/threatened/charged, the entire alliance takes it as affecting them all and they all bring their collective capitalist powers to bear, kinda like the open source alliance against patent trolls.
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:23AM
Don't they have a special secret "court" they take you to? One that basically rubber stamps things?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:56AM
Yes. They have a secret court with secret laws where they can basically do as they please.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Wednesday July 29 2015, @05:05AM
Sad. Such a great country. I'd love to move to the US and have free run of places like California. Live/work in Hawaii for a bit. Msg me for a sham greencard marriage you Americans!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:18PM
Maybe they wouldn't take you to court... instead they just "disappear" key personnel working for you, or throw them in a cell at gitmo in the name of "fighting terrorism"
That's way too drastic. They would just infiltrate you with a plant that is going to give them the info they need. That way you don't know you're giving the info away and keep posting your canary giving everyone a happy squishy feeling inside AND they keep a valuable intelligence source running and providing them with the raw data.
It's been done before, it's happening now and it will happen in the future.