Google Asks FISA Court to Ease Gag Orders

Google has filed a motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to ease gag orders over the details of data requests it has received, saying it believes the First Amendment should entitle it to disclose the information it was forced to provide to the government.

Google is one of seven companies involved in the PRISM scandal (technically the PRISM Nine includes only seven existing companies since two have been acquired by the others), and is hoping that more disclosures would help repair their reputation.

FISA court orders often include blanket gag orders that prevent the company being forced to hand data over not only to produce the data, but to keep that fact a secret for the sake of “national security.”

Verizon was forced to cope with this fact in a statement relating to the leaked revelations that they have to turn over all meta-data from every single phone call on their service to the NSA, by publicly saying that they would neither confirm nor deny the already confirmed report, because the order itself forbids them from talking about it.