>The Justice Department had endorsed the new rules months ago but intelligence officials argued they still revealed too much information. The breakthrough came in recent weeks with a rule requiring new companies to wait two years before publishing data.
> That provision means nobody will know whether the government is eavesdropping on a new email platform or chat service. And itpersuaded intelligence officials to endorse the rules, a U.S. official familiar with the discussions said. The Justice Department proposed the changes to the companies late last week and, by the end of the weekend, they agreed to drop their case before the FISA court.
Does this imply that the two year waiting period (as opposed to 1-year, six month delay) is a new restriction specifically added in for new companies in order to get Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook to drop their case?
I don't expect that too many new companies would be eager to report that data, but I'm curious if this is ultimately a win for intelligence officials.
I got the impression the requirement on new companies was to satisfy the Intelligence Community, not the existing tech companies.
The presumable idea being that if a new email/social provider pops up and has, say, a 2,000 subscribers after the end of the first year, saying that there have been <500 NSLs is more individually-specific than saying there were 500-1000 (or whatever) for a site like GMail or Facebook.
> That provision means nobody will know whether the government is eavesdropping on a new email platform or chat service. And itpersuaded intelligence officials to endorse the rules, a U.S. official familiar with the discussions said. The Justice Department proposed the changes to the companies late last week and, by the end of the weekend, they agreed to drop their case before the FISA court.
Does this imply that the two year waiting period (as opposed to 1-year, six month delay) is a new restriction specifically added in for new companies in order to get Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook to drop their case?
I don't expect that too many new companies would be eager to report that data, but I'm curious if this is ultimately a win for intelligence officials.