Craig Timberg
Washington Post
June 18, 2013
Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on
Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes,
arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about
information it’s forced to give the government.
The legal filing,
which cites the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, is the
latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation
in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic.
Google, one of nine companies named in NSA documents as providing
information to the top-secret PRISM program, has demanded that U.S.
officials give it more leeway to describe the company’s relationship
with the government. Google and the other companies involved have sought
to reassure users that their privacy is being protected from unwarranted intrusions.
In the petition, Google is seeking permission to publish the total
numbers of requests the court makes of the company and the numbers of
user accounts they affect. The company long has made regular reports
with regard to other data demands from the U.S. government and from
other governments worldwide.
Full story here.
