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Friday, June 14, 2013

Google Calls U.S. Data Request Disclosures a Step Backward for Users

Even as the government gave tech companies permission to publish some data on national security requests for user data, Google said it did not go far enough.

Facebook and Microsoft on Friday night published data that for the first time included national security requests authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are broad surveillance orders that prohibit recipients from acknowledging their existence. The companies, led by Google, had been publicly pressing the government to let them publish the data since Tuesday, in an attempt to quell anxiety among consumers after revelations of the government’s secret Internet surveillance program.

But the government gave the companies permission to publish the numbers only if they were grouped with all other government requests, including those from state and local governments and for criminal cases, making it very difficult to glean any information about the national security requests.

Google already publishes a transparency report that separates requests by country and type, including search warrants, subpoenas and national security letters. The report does not include FISA requests.

On Friday, the company issued a statement saying that publishing data that combines criminal and national security requests would be even less transparent than the data it currently publishes, and that it would continue to push the government for permission to publish the number and scope of the FISA requests it receives.

“Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users,” the statement said. “Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.”

Google and other tech companies have said they want to disclose the information in part to correct misimpressions about their participation in government surveillance. While some have pushed back on requests, they are forced to comply with lawful orders, yet are unable to talk about them.

Twitter, which also publishes a transparency report but does not include national security requests because of silence orders, issued a statement in support of Google.

“We agree with @Google: It’s important to be able to publish numbers of national security requests â€" including FISA disclosures â€" separately,” Benjamin Lee, Twitter’s legal director, wrote on Twitter.

Facebook had never published data on government requests for user data until Friday, because it had said the data was meaningless if it did not include national security requests. On Friday, Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel, said in a statement that the company was still trying to get permission from the government to publish more detail.

John Frank, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, wrote in a blog post, “We continue to believe that what we are permitted to publish continues to fall short of what is needed to help the community understand and debate these issues.”



Google Calls U.S. Data Request Disclosures a Step Backward for Users

Even as the government gave tech companies permission to publish some data on national security requests for user data, Google said it did not go far enough.

Facebook and Microsoft on Friday night published data that for the first time included national security requests authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are broad surveillance orders that prohibit recipients from acknowledging their existence. The companies, led by Google, had been publicly pressing the government to let them publish the data since Tuesday, in an attempt to quell anxiety among consumers after revelations of the government’s secret Internet surveillance program.

But the government gave the companies permission to publish the numbers only if they were grouped with all other government requests, including those from state and local governments and for criminal cases, making it very difficult to glean any information about the national security requests.

Google already publishes a transparency report that separates requests by country and type, including search warrants, subpoenas and national security letters. The report does not include FISA requests.

On Friday, the company issued a statement saying that publishing data that combines criminal and national security requests would be even less transparent than the data it currently publishes, and that it would continue to push the government for permission to publish the number and scope of the FISA requests it receives.

“Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users,” the statement said. “Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.”

Google and other tech companies have said they want to disclose the information in part to correct misimpressions about their participation in government surveillance. While some have pushed back on requests, they are forced to comply with lawful orders, yet are unable to talk about them.

Twitter, which also publishes a transparency report but does not include national security requests because of silence orders, issued a statement in support of Google.

“We agree with @Google: It’s important to be able to publish numbers of national security requests â€" including FISA disclosures â€" separately,” Benjamin Lee, Twitter’s legal director, wrote on Twitter.

Facebook had never published data on government requests for user data until Friday, because it had said the data was meaningless if it did not include national security requests. On Friday, Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel, said in a statement that the company was still trying to get permission from the government to publish more detail.

John Frank, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, wrote in a blog post, “We continue to believe that what we are permitted to publish continues to fall short of what is needed to help the community understand and debate these issues.”



Facebook Discloses Basic Data on Law-Enforcement Requests

Facebook on Friday disclosed for the first time how many requests for data about its 1.1 billion users that it had gotten from law enforcement authorities in the United States.

The social networking company said that in the last six months of 2012, it had 9,000 to 10,000 requests for information about its users from local, state and federal agencies. Those requests covered 18,000 to 19,000 user accounts.

“These requests run the gamut â€" from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat,” the company’s general counsel, Ted Ullyot, said in a blog post disclosing the data.

Facebook said it was legally prohibited from saying how many of the data requests were related to national security. But generally speaking, the vast majority of the law-enforcement data requests received by tech companies are for other matters, like local criminal cases.

Facebook’s disclosure comes after negotiations with the federal government that began after the first news reports a week ago about the National Security Agency’s secret Prism surveillance program. Those reports revealed that a number of American Internet companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, had secretly provided data about foreigners to the United States government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The tech companies have also secretly provided data to the F.B.I. under National Security Letters, which the government uses to gather information about Americans.

Under federal law, companies generally cannot disclose even the existence of national security data requests they receive. But in recent days, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have been pressing the government for permission to share more information.

“We’re pleased that as a result of our discussions, we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) - which until now no company has been permitted to do,” Mr. Ullyot wrote. “As of today, the government will only authorize us to communicate about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range. This is progress, but we’re continuing to push for even more transparency.”

Google had previously published a transparency report that included N.S.L. but not F.I.S.A. data requests. Microsoft’s recent transparency report excluded both types of national security requests.



Facebook Discloses Basic Data on Law-Enforcement Requests

Facebook on Friday disclosed for the first time how many requests for data about its 1.1 billion users that it had gotten from law enforcement authorities in the United States.

The social networking company said that in the last six months of 2012, it had 9,000 to 10,000 requests for information about its users from local, state and federal agencies. Those requests covered 18,000 to 19,000 user accounts.

“These requests run the gamut â€" from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat,” the company’s general counsel, Ted Ullyot, said in a blog post disclosing the data.

Facebook said it was legally prohibited from saying how many of the data requests were related to national security. But generally speaking, the vast majority of the law-enforcement data requests received by tech companies are for other matters, like local criminal cases.

Facebook’s disclosure comes after negotiations with the federal government that began after the first news reports a week ago about the National Security Agency’s secret Prism surveillance program. Those reports revealed that a number of American Internet companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, had secretly provided data about foreigners to the United States government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The tech companies have also secretly provided data to the F.B.I. under National Security Letters, which the government uses to gather information about Americans.

Under federal law, companies generally cannot disclose even the existence of national security data requests they receive. But in recent days, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have been pressing the government for permission to share more information.

“We’re pleased that as a result of our discussions, we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) - which until now no company has been permitted to do,” Mr. Ullyot wrote. “As of today, the government will only authorize us to communicate about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range. This is progress, but we’re continuing to push for even more transparency.”

Google had previously published a transparency report that included N.S.L. but not F.I.S.A. data requests. Microsoft’s recent transparency report excluded both types of national security requests.



Tech Pushes to Keep Its Spoils in Immigration Bill

Keen to hold on to its winnings in a landmark Senate immigration bill, the technology industry this week put on what one lobbyist called “a full court press” on Capitol Hill, dispatching executives and entrepreneurs to buttonhole lawmakers and rallying people in the industry to dispatch e-mails, telephone calls and Twitter messages to Congress.

Human resource department heads from eight of the country’s largest technology companies popped into the offices of more than a dozen members of Congress. A new group called Engine Advocacy, which has focused on a so-called start-up visa for foreign entrepreneurs, sent its representatives to the Hill and set up a new online platform, called www.keepushere.org, to encourage techies to send Twitter posts to members of Congress. And yet another industry-led coalition, called Partnership for a New Economy, and supported by New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, was rallying supporters to aim at crucial senators, state by state, to support the bill with a “virtual march.”

The efforts all point to a wave of unprecedented effort by Silicon Valley firms to make sure the overhaul of the federal immigration law goes in their favor. The omnibus bill, which arrived on the full Senate floor this week after intense negotiations in the Judiciary Committee, contains several provisions directed specifically at the technology sector. It makes it easier for foreign students who get science and engineering degrees at American universities to get permanent residency, creates a new temporary visa for entrepreneurs, and in the most contested clause, vastly expands how many temporary contract workers can be brought into this country under so-called H-1B visas, while also raising the minimum wages they must be paid.

The delicate political agreement could still fall apart, and for Silicon Valley, the temporary work visas expansion is by far the most delicate piece. Labor groups say the law should require these companies to hire Americans first. Industry groups call that undue regulatory interference. Both sides have tried to muster evidence to back their claims. And this week, the industry upped the ante by bringing human resources managers directly to Washington to persuade Congress of their need to bring in foreign workers to fill job openings. Organized by the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group that includes companies like Apple and Oracle, the hiring managers told lawmakers that the demand for talent is so competitive that they sometimes blatantly poach from one another.

There are likely to be more calls on the Senate floor to require companies to show that they are making efforts to hire Americans.

Meanwhile, Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, introduced an amendment Wednesday to lower the investments that an entrepreneur would need to get permanent residency. The current bill requires a foreign entrepreneur to raise $100,000 in investments to gain a temporary visa and $500,000 for permanent residency. Among other things, the amendment would lower those thresholds: anyone who raises $250,000 in investments would be eligible for permanent residence.

The biggest push is yet to come. All eyes are on what the industry’s newest, most well-financed lobby, Fwd.us, backed by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, will do next. It has stepped into the immigration fight with expensive television advertisements for key Republicans who backed the immigration bill in the Senate Judiciary. Those ads included a television spot that praised the Keystone XL pipeline, a pet project of key Republican senators, and it cost Fwd.us support from some of its backers in Silicon Valley. It remains to be seen what kinds of political advertisements the group will bankroll next, and who they will back.



Latest Updates on Election Day in Iran

The Lede is following developments in Iran on Friday, where voters went to the polls in the first presidential election since the disputed contest in 2009. Our colleague Thomas Erdbrink â€" who is posting updates from Tehran on Twitter @ThomasErdbrink â€" is one of a handful of foreign correspondents reporting from inside the country, but glimpses of election day can be gleaned from official media sources and expatriate Iranian journalists with sources inside the country.

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11:13 A.M. Polling Time Extended in Iran, as Usual
Iran’s state-run Press TV reported on Friday that polling places would be kept open late.

In a development that Iran’s state-run satellite channel Press TV describes as dramatic breaking news, but my colleague Thomas Erdbrink calls routine, voting hours have been extended in Iran.

The state broadcaster claims that the extension was due to heavy turnout at polling places, but, as Thomas reports, the Islamic Republic’s unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was among the first to cast is ballot, seems determined to combat the perception that there is a lack of enthusiasm among voters after the disappointment that drove many to the streets four years ago when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner despite widespread allegations of fraud.

In televised remarks to reporters after casting his ballot, Iran’s ruling cleric said: “The enemies have made strenuous attempts to prevent people from coming to the polling stations through creating disappointment and pessimism.” He also scoffed at what he said doubts about the fairness of the vote from an unnamed official of the National Security Council in the United States, saying: “To hell with you if you do not believe in our election. If the Iranian nation had to wait for you to see what you believe in and what you do not, then the Iranian nation would have lagged behind.”

Video of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, voting and speaking to reporters in Tehran on Friday.

The leader’s Twitter feed echoed his remarks.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.



Apple E-Book Negotiator Defends Tactics in Trial

Apple Negotiator Defends Tactics in E-Book Trial

Louis Lanzano/Associated Press

Eddy Cue, center, of Apple as he left Federal District Court in Manhattan on Thursday.

A top executive at Apple who was a close associate of Steve Jobs said on Thursday that he had thrown himself into negotiations with the major publishing houses as Apple entered the e-book market because “Steve was near the end of his life.”

The executive, Eddy Cue, Apple’s lead negotiator with the publishers, said he was determined to close deals that would allow them to sell their e-books on Apple’s iBookstore in time for the introduction of the iPad in early 2010.

“I wanted to be able to get that done in time for that because it was really important to him,” Mr. Cue said, referring to Mr. Jobs. He was testifying in Federal District Court in Manhattan in the civil antitrust trial brought against Apple by the Justice Department.

“I pride myself on being successful, but this had extra meaning to me,” Mr. Cue added.

Those sped-up negotiations attracted the attention of the government, which filed a lawsuit against Apple and five publishers in April 2012. Mr. Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, died of cancer in October 2011.

Mr. Cue, the highest-ranking Apple executive to take the stand so far in a trial that began almost two weeks ago, mounted a vigorous defense of Apple, which is accused of colluding with the publishers to fix e-book prices.

Through a nearly full day of testimony on Thursday, Mr. Cue denied that he had encouraged publishers to impose a new business model on other retailers, including Amazon.com. Shown a slide displaying what the government has repeatedly called a “spider web” of communications among the publishing executives, Mr. Cue said he did not know that the executives, from publishers including the Penguin Group USA and Simon & Schuster, were talking to one another during their negotiations with him.

“I struggled and fought with them,” he said. “If they were talking to each other, I believe I would have had a much easier time getting those deals done.”

But he also revealed details of an unusually long and close working relationship between him and Mr. Jobs.

Mr. Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, said he spoke or e-mailed with Mr. Jobs at nearly every step of the negotiations, once calling him on his way to the airport as he left a round of talks with publishers in New York.

In one e-mail, Mr. Jobs questioned Mr. Cue about the fledgling iBookstore. “Are we going to let anyone self-publish? Does Amazon?” he wrote.

“Yes and yes,” Mr. Cue replied.

After publishers signed agreements with Apple, shocking the publishing industry, Mr. Jobs e-mailed Mr. Cue: “Wow, we have really lit the fuse on a powder keg.”

The focus of the government’s questioning turned to December 2009 and January 2010, when Mr. Cue repeatedly flew to New York, met with publishers and tried to reach deals to make their e-books available in the iBookstore on the soon-to-be-unveiled iPad.

For publishers, the appeal of Apple getting into the e-book market was enormous. Amazon, which had introduced its Kindle e-reader in 2007, commanded a 90 percent share of e-book sales at the time. But the default price for newly released and best-selling books on Amazon.com was $9.99, a paltry sum in the publishers’ eyes and one that undermined the value of the authors’ work and cannibalized hardcover sales.

Apple encouraged publishers to switch to a so-called agency model, in which the publishers set the price of a book and the retailer takes a commission. Previously, e-books had been sold on a wholesale model, where the retailer pays the publisher about half the list price, then is free to set another price. The agency model prevented Amazon from sharply discounting the books.

Five publishers â€" the Penguin Group USA, the Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Macmillan â€" have already settled with the government. But Apple, intent on protecting Mr. Jobs’s legacy, is fighting the charges in a nonjury trial that was expected to last several weeks.

The defense was questioning Mr. Cue when the day ended and he will return to the stand when the trial continues on Monday.

Lawrence Buterman, a lawyer for the Justice Department, occasionally raised his voice while he questioned Mr. Cue for several hours before a packed courtroom presided over by Judge Denise L. Cote.

“Isn’t it true, sir, that throughout your negotiations with the publishers, that you constantly pitched the deal that you were proposing as a way for them to change the entire e-books market?” Mr. Buterman said.

“No, that is not true,” Mr. Cue said.

Mr. Buterman asked Mr. Cue about a previous statement by David Shanks, the chief executive of the Penguin Group USA, that Penguin would only sign a deal with Apple if three other major publishers had done so first.

“Did that strike you as a little bit like, ‘I’m only doing this deal if my competitors do it?’ “ Mr. Buterman said.

“It’s not unusual,” Mr. Cue said. “Nobody likes to be the first to sign. Everybody thinks that you get a better deal by signing last.”

According to Mr. Cue, Apple approached the negotiations with publishers the same way it did with record companies and other content providers in the iTunes store.

After Apple and other retailers started selling e-books on the agency model, prices on many best-selling and new books rose to the $12.99 to $14.99 range, infuriating many consumers.

“Who protected them?” Mr. Buterman said.

“I did,” Mr. Cue said.

“By charging them higher prices?” Mr. Buterman said.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 14, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Apple Negotiator Defends Tactics in an E-Book Trial.

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