Following last week’s open letter to the directors of the FBI and national intelligence, Google has filed a motion to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for permission to publish data on national security requests, The New York Times reports. In the motion, the company contends it has First Amendment rights to publish request totals and the number of users affected. In a personal blog post, Google Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer writes, “In Europe it’s become a parlour game to debate and decry U.S. government surveillance programs,” but “there’s far less debate or transparency about European government surveillance programs.” A Governing article explores whether the PRISM leaks will affect state and local open-data projects. The leaks also raise questions about the role of chief privacy officers when law enforcement approaches an organization with a FISA order, NSL or other secret requests. A free teleconference hosted by the IAPP will explore the issues. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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