Tech Firms Rally, Expecting Justice Department to Oppose Transparency Requests

Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Yahoo and other tech companies today sent a letter to the heads of the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees in support of proposed legislation that would allow them to publish statistics about secret national security surveillance orders. The Center for Democracy & Technology, which organized the group, said the letter was timed to coincide with the U.S. Justice Department’s filing of a brief with the FISA court today opposing many of those companies’ requests to disclose information about when it asks them for user data.