The FISA requests sound like rubberstamp judges, but at least they have judges. National Security Letters, on the other hand, have no oversight. Even with the public uproar post-Snowden, the seemingly excessive surveillance goes on. Hopefully congress will get motivated one day, and pass a few laws for public rights to privacy. Maybe even sunset a few of the Patriot Act provisions.
Apple: We just got blitzed by US national security requests
The US made twice as many data requests to Apple in the last six months of 2016 as it did in the first six months, the company says.
by Shara Tibken
The US and other governments around the world needed a lot of help getting data from Apple devices last year.
The number of national security orders issued to Apple by US law enforcement doubled to about 6,000 in the second half of 2016, compared with the first half of the year, Apple disclosed in its biannual transparency report. Those requests included orders received under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as well as national security letters, the latter of which are issued by the FBI and don't require a judge's sign-off.
Critics of national security letters, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, say they "allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens' private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review." Companies that receive national security letters are subject to gag orders, which means they can't even disclose they've received such orders -- unless the letters become declassified.
That's what happened in Apple's case. It disclosed late Monday, as part of its most recent transparency report, that one of the national security orders it received came in the form of a declassified national security letter. It didn't provide any more information about the letter, including when it originally received the order or what the order involved. Other companies have shared more information about the requests when they're declassified.
Apple on Tuesday declined to comment beyond its transparency report, as did the US Department of Justice.
National security letters were enabled by the USA Freedom Act, which passed in 2015. As part of the regulations, the FBI has to re-examine past national security letters and decide which can be declassified. Those started being reported by recipients a year ago.
Apple's not the only company that's received national security letters. Twitter disclosed in January that it received two from the FBI in the last two years that previously came with gag orders not to discuss them. Google, Yahoo and Cloudflare also have published national security letters received from the FBI, some dating back to 2013.
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Originally Posted by A99
