Apple, Alphabet, Meta push back against US spy law
Apple, Alphabet, and Meta are lobbying to curtail a tool that grants intelligence agencies the right to collect and view the personal information of American citizens.
Big Tech seeks to change the way Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) works before Congress attempts to renew the law before the year's end. Specifically, Section 702 allows government agencies to demand data -- such as phone records, texts, and emails -- from companies for national security investigations.
While intelligence agencies say Section 702 is an essential tool to fight terrorism, U.S. officials have acknowledged that there have been "compliance incidents" over how it's been used to obtain information, Bloomberg points out.
However, those agencies have said that reforms have been made to prevent such abuses.
FBI Director Christopher Wray notes that Section 702 database searches have dropped 93% between 2021 and 2022.
Still, tech companies and activists have a good cause to seek to limit Section 702. Many companies faced severe pushback after Edward Snowden exposed their involvement with intelligence agencies.
Specifically, they hope to gain the ability to publicly disclose how often they're asked to provide information under Section 702 and what kind of data they are expected to hand over.
Big Tech also hopes to restrict intelligence agencies from using the information and instead require a warrant before agencies can search the Section 702 database for info on U.S. citizens.
There has been support for limiting Section 702 by both Republicans and Democrats. Representative Darin LaHood, a Republican from Illinois, has publicly said that "a clean legislative reauthorization of 702 is a non-starter."
Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, has gone on record saying, "We must take this opportunity to reform Section 702 and overhaul privacy protections for Americans."
In the first half of 2020 alone, Apple had received 4,177 "account requests" from government agencies, in general, involving 40,641 people. In the U.S., police and spy agencies can legally obtain material such as emails and iCloud backups so long as it can be decrypted.
Read on AppleInsider
Big Tech seeks to change the way Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) works before Congress attempts to renew the law before the year's end. Specifically, Section 702 allows government agencies to demand data -- such as phone records, texts, and emails -- from companies for national security investigations.
While intelligence agencies say Section 702 is an essential tool to fight terrorism, U.S. officials have acknowledged that there have been "compliance incidents" over how it's been used to obtain information, Bloomberg points out.
However, those agencies have said that reforms have been made to prevent such abuses.
FBI Director Christopher Wray notes that Section 702 database searches have dropped 93% between 2021 and 2022.
Still, tech companies and activists have a good cause to seek to limit Section 702. Many companies faced severe pushback after Edward Snowden exposed their involvement with intelligence agencies.
Specifically, they hope to gain the ability to publicly disclose how often they're asked to provide information under Section 702 and what kind of data they are expected to hand over.
Big Tech also hopes to restrict intelligence agencies from using the information and instead require a warrant before agencies can search the Section 702 database for info on U.S. citizens.
There has been support for limiting Section 702 by both Republicans and Democrats. Representative Darin LaHood, a Republican from Illinois, has publicly said that "a clean legislative reauthorization of 702 is a non-starter."
Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, has gone on record saying, "We must take this opportunity to reform Section 702 and overhaul privacy protections for Americans."
In the first half of 2020 alone, Apple had received 4,177 "account requests" from government agencies, in general, involving 40,641 people. In the U.S., police and spy agencies can legally obtain material such as emails and iCloud backups so long as it can be decrypted.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
The US came in first with 2,451,077 account requests, more than four times the number of Germany, the number two country on the list. In fact, the US made more requests than all of Europe, including the UK, which collectively came in under 2 million."
"The report also sheds light on which companies comply the most versus which ones push back against requests. For all of its privacy-oriented marketing — “what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone” — Apple complies with data requests more than any other company, handing it over 82% of the time.
In contrast, Meta complies 72% of the time, and Google does 71% of the time. Microsoft, on the other hand, pushes back the most among Big Tech companies, only handing data over 68% of the time."
Also your source is SurfShark. They have a vested interest in making the numbers look as bad as they can in order to get more subscribers. Better to wait for numbers from some group that isn’t going to profit from them.
https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
https://transparencyreport.google.com/?hl=en
https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy-report-april2022
https://transparency.fb.com/data/
Both Apple and Google "get it"; users want to make sure their data is kept protected and private, even from government access.
Uncle Sam wants access to all the Chinese, sorry I meant American companies.
also, he agreed to return to US to stand trial, the only condition is the trial must be open to pubic. But US only promise not to torture him and refuse public trail.
But the US have about 4x the population of Germany. Is that factored in? If not, then the US and Germany would be about the same in the number of government search request .... "per capita".
Section 702 is supposed to be a foreign intelligence tool that focuses on terrorism and espionage. Technically it's not allowed to target "U.S. persons" but can collect data on them if the foreign target is in communication with people in the United States. Yes, the FBI can search the Section 702 data base but since 2018 they are legally required to get a court order for reviewing non-foreign data for criminal investigations that aren't related to national security. There are documented situations since 2018 where the FBI failed to get the court order and used the Section 702 data base like that anyway, thus the controversy. Example: Darin LaHood, the Republican quoted in the article, has personally claimed the FBI searched for info under his name in the Section 702 data base without a court order.
and yet some people worry about the chinese having access to our TikTok data
i would much rather the chinese have my data than the US government
i live in the US, so that data could harm me here
what could the chinese do if they know i like cars and big hooters via my TikTok account?