The companies named as participants in the Prism spying program have been pushing the government to allow them to release more information about their level of cooperation, presumably to counter reports that they believe have been blown out of proportion. Earlier in the week, Google said it received between 0 and 999 national security letters related to between 1,000 and 1,999 accounts in all of 2012.
On All Things D, Google argued that the information released by Facebook was inadequate. A company spokesperson told the blog:
We have always believed that it’s important to differentiate between different types of government requests. We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.
Both Google and Twitter have released transparency reports in the past, but they have not discussed national security letters. Still, these reports have gone further than Friday’s disclosures in one key way: they’ve said how often the companies have complied with the government’s requests for information. In 2012, Google says it complied with 88 percent to 90 percent of government requests for user data from the United States; Twitter says it did so between 69 percent and 75 percent of the time.
While Facebook’s statement did not include anything on this, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company had shared at least some information 79 percent of the time.