<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"><base href="x-msg://1530/"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Sep 25, 2013, at 4:23 PM, michael gurstein <<a href="mailto:gurstein@gmail.com">gurstein@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1; "><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">Perhaps someone could enlighten me on this…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">I know that pursuing this is a major pre-occupation of various US Internet corps (Google, Facebook etc.) and I can see that getting this made public might help them get off the hook a bit (look how few the requests given the number of users we have/items we process etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">What I don't understand is why civil society should be interested in this at all since there seem to be an almost infinite number of ways of gaming this (according to various Snowden documents i.e. one reqyest covering all communications between x and xxxistan for the month of January)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "> </span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">Surely CS is concerned with findings ways of managing these practices rather than getting better information on specific items of activity etc.etc.</span></div></div></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Michael - </div><div> </div><div> While I share your concern regarding potential for "gaming" the reporting</div><div> as well as a desire to see such "blanket" collection practices curtailed, it</div><div> is also worthwhile to seek more transparency on the use of these practices.</div><div><br></div><div> For example, it would be difficult to know whether efforts towards "finding </div><div> ways of managing these practices" actually yields results unless one has</div><div> at least some measures of their use. To this end, it's probably worthwhile</div><div> to advocate for the ability for regular reporting to the public.</div><div><br></div><div>/John</div><div><br></div><div>Disclaimer: My views alone and of very limited value. Countries intercepting </div><div> this message might want to use their limited storage more wisely.</div><div><br></div></body></html>