Verizon, AT&T to Issue Government Transparency Reports

All it took was six months and some of the worst press any corporation could possibly have. Verizon and AT&T will finally begin issuing transparency reports of government requests for their data.

It's a striking move for both companies and privacy advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation said they were "pleasantly surprised" by the move. Verizon was the centerpiece of the very first of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's revelations: that the NSA regularly got the call records of all Verizon's customers via secret court order.

When American tech companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook were soon similarly indicted with documents proving they were tapped in a program called PRISM, they sprung into action. Each issued carefully worded denials that they were willing participants in such a scheme, and already published transparency reports — fuzzed on the specifics, per government demand — of how much information that governments around the world, including the U.S., demanded of them. Read more...