FBI secretly requests data on thousands of Google users annually

Internet giant Google has included stats on user data requestsfrom FBI in its recent Transparency Report, saying it has receivedbetween zero and 999 letters a year since 2009 that have asked forprivate information of 1,000 – 2,999 users. The company explainedits use of ranges instead of exact figures due to concerns of theFBI and the US Department of Justice that “releasing exactnumbers might reveal information about investigations.”
National security letters (NSLs) compel Google to expose“name, address, length of service, and local and long distancetoll billing records” of specified users. NSLs are said to beused only for conducting national security investigations by the USgovernment.
Google’s FAQ assures the FBI is still not permitted toobtain user email content, search queries, YouTube videos or IPaddresses. Representatives from Google have previously dismissedallegations of disclosing such data, publicly as well as in court.
The FBI is “not required to get court approval to issue anNSL,” the FAQ adds. In order to have the needed data granted,it is sufficient for the agency to enclose a document provingrelevance to an “authorized investigation to protect againstinternational terrorism or clandestine intelligenceactivities.” The FBI also has the power to prohibit disclosureof the fact that an NSL was received in the first place.
Google has become the first company to ever release data on thevolume of NSL requests. All internet companies and ISPs, as well ascredit companies and financial institutions, can receive NSLs fromthe federal government.
The lack of court oversight makes extensive abuse and misuse ofthese highly secretive requests possible, Wired stated on Tuesday,telling of known cases of such abuse. The US Justice Departmentrevealed in 2007 that the FBI agents could “illegally look”at customer records of certain companies with no paperwork involvedat all.
According the DOJ report with the latest available figures, thetotal number of NSLs issued by the FBI in 2011 is just over16,500.
The NSL stats are not included in Google’s biannual TransparencyReport, which showed 42,327 requests for personal data weresubmitted to the company by national governments and lawenforcement agencies in 2012 alone. The US government topped thelist, having made 16,407 such requests last year.