Microsoft: Talks with US gov't on surveillance transparency break down

Negotiations have broken down between two Internet giants and U.S. government representatives over the companies' requests to publish information on the surveillance requests they receive, a Microsoft executive said Friday.

Microsoft and Google both filed lawsuits in June asking that the companies be allowed to disclose more information about U.S. government surveillance requests they receive. The two companies agreed to extend the government's deadline to respond to the lawsuits during negotiations over recent weeks, but those negotiations have failed, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith wrote in a blog post.

"We hoped that these discussions would lead to an agreement acceptable to all," Smith wrote. "While we appreciate the good faith and earnest efforts by the capable Government lawyers with whom we negotiated, we are disappointed that these negotiations ended in failure."

The two companies requested that they be allowed to publish data about the number of surveillance requests they receive after former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about the agency's widespread surveillance activities.

"We both remain concerned with the Government's continued unwillingness to permit us to publish sufficient data relating to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders," Smith wrote. "We believe we have a clear right under the U.S. Constitution to share more information with the public."

U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's announcement Thursday that his office would begin to publish the total number of national security requests each year was a "good start," Smith wrote. "But the public deserves and the Constitution guarantees more than this first step."

Microsoft wants to publish information showing the number of national security demands for user content, such as the text of an email, he said.

Microsoft and Google will move forward with their lawsuits after negotiations have broken down, Smith said. The U.S. Department of Justice has a late Friday deadline to respond to both Google's and Microsoft's lawsuits in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.


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Tech groups ask US for transparency in secret data requests

Influential technology companies and groups want the U.S. government to lift restrictions on publicizing secret requests for user data as the fallout continues over the scale of government surveillance.

Google, Facebook and Reddit are among the many signatories to a letter dated Thursday asking for more transparency in national-security related investigations. The letter's addressees include President Barack Obama, the National Security Agency and many House and Senate members.

"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," according to the letter, a copy of which was provided to IDG News Service.

"We seek permission for the same information to be made available regarding the government's national security--related authorities," it said.

Several data collection projects were revealed in late May by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who remains in a Moscow airport while seeking asylum arrangements. Documents provided to The Guardian and other media outlets described sweeping surveillance projects that collect email metadata, instant messaging traffic and file transfers.

Technology companies are legally compelled to comply with government requests for data. But the requests, some of which fall under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), cannot be publicized under orders from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

The letter asks the U.S. Department of Justice to let companies publish statistics on government requests "under specific national security authorities." It also calls on Congress to pass legislation requiring the same kind of reporting from the government.

"This information about how and how often the government is using these legal authorities is important to the American people, who are entitled to have informed public debate about the appropriateness of those authorities and their use," the letter said.

The U.S. intelligence community's efforts had been described before by previous NSA whistle blowers. But the slides and information supplied by Snowden added a fresh new level of detail to recent spying efforts and the government's enlistment of some of the largest Internet players.

Yahoo has asked the intelligence court to release information dating from 2008 that shows it resisted government orders to turn over data. The FISC ordered on Monday that the government redact classified information in order to facilitate its public release.

Microsoft and Google have also recently filed motions with the court asking for permission to release information on national security orders and directives.

The letter will be made public Thursday morning U.S. time.

Google adds malware, phishing numbers to its transparency report to make the Web 'safer'

Google is revealing some new numbers around malware and phishing attempts in an effort to get more people thinking about online security and to make the Web safer.

 

The data is being incorporated into the company’s biannual transparency reports, which are meant to provide clarity on the numbers for user data requests Google receives from government agencies and courts, as well as figures on removal requests received from copyright owners and governments and traffic reports for Google services worldwide.

 

Phishing and malware sites detected by Google

 

The malware and phishing data stems from Google’s Safe Browsing technology, which was established in 2006 to examine billions of URLs each day to find unsafe websites. These unsafe sites, Google said, generally fall into two categories: malware sites, which use code to install malicious software on users’ computers; and phishing sites, which fake their legitimacy while trying to trick people into giving their user names and passwords or other private information online.

 

As of June 16, for instance, the company’s Safe Browsing program had detected nearly 42,000 malware sites per week, according to data Google released Tuesday. For phishing sites, the rate clocked in at roughly 26,000.

 

Concerns over online security have been heightened in recent months following a spate of cyberattacks carried out against major companies such as The New York Times and the Jeep car company on sites like Twitter.

 

Google’s thinking is that by providing details about these sorts of threats, “we hope to shine some light on the state of web security and encourage safer web security practices,” the company said in its report.

 

Google Safe Browsing is currently used by some 1 billion people, the company said. The service shows warnings when users navigate to unsafe websites while using the Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari browsers.

 

With the new figures, people can see how many Safe Browsing warnings are delivered to users each week (more than 88 million as of June 16); where malicious sites are hosted around the world (Europe is a bit of a hotbed); how quickly websites become reinfected after malware is removed (the rate “rises dramatically,” due to periodic rescanning of infected sites, Google said); and other tidbits like webmaster response time.

 

“We’re always looking for new ways to protect users’ security,” said Google software engineer Lucas Ballard in a blog post announcing the data.

 

Users can report websites suspected of hosting or distributing malware here, or a suspected phishing site here, Google notes.

 

The report also includes a section on “notable events,” which details some specific security incidents that are responsible for the larger trends contained in the report. Earlier this month, for instance, a campaign targeting vulnerabilities in Java and Acrobat Reader infected more than 7,500 sites, resulting in more than 75 million Safe Browsing users to receive malware warnings.

 

As part of its larger transparency report, Google last released numbers on data removal requests in April, when they spiked to over 2000.