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Apple to Team Up With Tech Companies to Ask for Greater NSA Transparency

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MacRumors

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Apple is joining forces with Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and several other technology companies and civil liberties groups to request via letter that the U.S. government offer greater surveillance transparency, allowing Internet, telephone, and Web-based service providers to give consumers regular reports on security related requests, reports AllThingsD.
"Basic information about how the government uses its various law enforcement-related investigative authorities has been published for years without any apparent disruption to criminal investigations," a copy of the letter obtained by AllThingsD reads. "We seek permission for the same information to be made available regarding the government's national security-related authorities."
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The alliance is made up of 63 different companies, investors, non-profits, and trade organizations that will publish a missive on Thursday asking President Obama and congressional leaders to allow them to report on the following:
-The number of government requests for information about their users
-The number of individuals, accounts, or devices for which information was requested
-The number of requests that sought communications content, basic subscriber information, and/or other information.
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The request comes after news of a top secret intelligence gathering program called 'PRISM' leaked in June, where a number of tech companies, including Apple, were accused of providing the U.S. government with direct access to user data.

Apple later clarified its position with a statement of its "Commitment to Customer Privacy," denying participation in PRISM and noting that the company conducts a thorough evaluation of each law enforcement request for data and aims to "retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities."

Update: The full letter has now been published. Direct link: [PDF]

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the comment thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All MacRumors forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: Apple to Team Up With Tech Companies to Ask for Greater NSA Transparency
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/07/17/apple-to-team-up-with-tech-companies-to-ask-for-greater-nsa-transparency/
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winterspan

macrumors 65816
Jun 12, 2007
1,008
0
That's a good start, but I think we need a major overhaul of the Patriotic Act and the FISA court. I'm glad the American public is starting to understand what us Libertarians have been screaming about for years..
 
D

donutbagel

macrumors 6502a
Jun 9, 2013
932
1
It's for publicity. "Hey look guys, we're cool!"

Also, showing how many users are being monitored? So what?
 
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Y

yeah

macrumors 6502a
Jul 12, 2011
978
291
Good, because I don't want my por... Er..... Wireless bill to be monitored. :D
 
ConCat

ConCat

macrumors 6502a
Jul 27, 2012
722
0
In an ethereal plane of existence.
winterspan said:
That's a good start, but I think we need a major overhaul of the Patriotic Act and the FISA court. I'm glad the American public is starting to understand what us Libertarians have been screaming about for years..
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Understanding comes from hardship. The entire western world has been fortunate enough to live in the lap of luxury for a long time now. We don't really understand what it means to have freedoms taken away. Hopefully we never find out, but the trend is frightening.
 
A

AdonisSMU

macrumors 604
Oct 23, 2010
7,297
3,047
The government needs to be operating above board. All these excuses about why they need to have secret laws with secret courts is not justified.

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winterspan said:
That's a good start, but I think we need a major overhaul of the Patriotic Act and the FISA court. I'm glad the American public is starting to understand what us Libertarians have been screaming about for years..
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What about liberals have been screaming about for years? Liberals were screaming about the patriot act since before it was even passed.
 
ConCat

ConCat

macrumors 6502a
Jul 27, 2012
722
0
In an ethereal plane of existence.
AdonisSMU said:
The government needs to be operating above board. All these excuses about why they need to have secret laws with secret courts is not justified.
Click to expand...

The government gets away with a lot. Extortion, murder, illegal surveillance, etc. It's all okay if the government's doing it, but if I were to, I'd be locked up. We have a long way to go for the government to be operating "above board".
 
C

CFreymarc

Suspended
Sep 4, 2009
3,969
1,149
Having an iPhone app with full access to PRISM would be a great seller. No, this is not sarcasm.
 
Rocketman

Rocketman

macrumors 603
Dec 2, 2001
6,191
1,186
Claremont, The intellectual capitol of the world.
MacRumors said:
Apple is joining forces with Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and several other technology companies and civil liberties groups to request via letter that the U.S. government offer greater surveillance transparency, allowing Internet, telephone, and Web-based service providers to give consumers regular reports on security related requests
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One cannot sue the government or its subdivisions unless permission is granted by the "person" being sued. Thus the term "via letter". At least for now nobody has to give permission to send a letter. Well certain letters on certain subjects anyway . . . . . . . .

Rocketman
 
IJ Reilly

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
Klae17 said:
Damage control.
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Essentially. But the damage they are controlling was caused by rash accusations that these companies have their servers plugged directly into the NSA. The only way they can counter that accusation is for the government to give them some cover to disclose how often they make requests for records.

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localoid said:
ZOMG! A strongly-worded letter?

Big Brother must be shaking in his boots!
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Because corporations in the USA don't get what they want from the federal government?
 
R

Rog210

macrumors regular
Mar 23, 2004
195
3
We need clarity

I hope these tech companies are allowed to honestly report their level of involvement with the NSA.

I won't be buying anything from Apple, or any other company mentioned in the leaked slides until I find out what's been going on.
 
K

kbt1020

macrumors regular
Feb 15, 2010
138
1
Apple, Google, and M$, never thought I'd live to see the day that they teamed up for something. :D
 
E

Eriden

macrumors regular
Sep 5, 2006
167
15
AdonisSMU said:
What about liberals have been screaming about for years? Liberals were screaming about the patriot act since before it was even passed.
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Liberals WERE screaming about it for years, and rightly so. They screamed about it right up until January 19th, 2009. Most don't care about the PATRIOT Act or the FISA courts now that a Dem is POTUS. You still have a number of more introspective progressives at EFF and the ACLU who realize that kind of power shouldn't be at the disposal of ANYONE in the government, regardless of party. Many rank-and-file liberals just don't care now that its Obama who wields the stick.
 
localoid

localoid

macrumors 68020
Feb 20, 2007
2,447
1,739
America's Third World
IJ Reilly said:
... Because corporations in the USA don't get what they want from the federal government?
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Both the government and corporations are in the business of collecting "big data" on every person on the planet. The corporate overlords would probably greatly prefer that the government "privatize" the process so that the task of "keeping America safe" could become yet another profit-making corporate venture.
 
ConCat

ConCat

macrumors 6502a
Jul 27, 2012
722
0
In an ethereal plane of existence.
Eriden said:
Liberals WERE screaming about it for years, and rightly so. They screamed about it right up until January 19th, 2009. Most don't care about the PATRIOT Act or the FISA courts now that a Dem is POTUS. You still have a number of more introspective progressives at EFF and the ACLU who realize that kind of power shouldn't be at the disposal of ANYONE in the government, regardless of party. Many rank-and-file liberals just don't care now that its Obama who wields the stick.
Click to expand...

That is certainly the problem with blind partisanship, on both sides. PRISM was started under Bush, and greatly expanded under Obama. It was a knee-jerk reaction to September 11, and should have been fought by everyone. Alas, as you say, most just toed the party line.
 
R

Rigby

macrumors 603
Aug 5, 2008
6,222
10,168
San Jose, CA
That's all nice and well, but Google (and a few other companies) have published so-called "transparency reports" for a long time ... and then we learned from the Snowden leaks that they were missing all of the "national security"-related requests and were thus not transparent at all. How can they expect people to trust in whatever new numbers they cook up?
 
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