[governance] [bestbits] Fwd: Taking the Transparency Push Global

John Curran jcurran at istaff.org
Wed Sep 25 16:58:55 EDT 2013


On Sep 25, 2013, at 4:23 PM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> Perhaps someone could enlighten me on this…
>  
> 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.
>  
> 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)
>  
> Surely CS is concerned with findings ways of managing these practices rather than getting better information on specific items of activity etc.etc.

Michael - 
 
   While I share your concern regarding potential for "gaming" the reporting
   as well as a desire to see such "blanket" collection practices curtailed, it
   is also worthwhile to seek more transparency on the use of these practices.

   For example, it would be difficult to know whether efforts towards "finding 
   ways of managing these practices" actually yields results unless one has
   at least some measures of their use.  To this end, it's probably worthwhile
   to advocate for the ability for regular reporting to the public.

/John

Disclaimer:  My views alone and of very limited value.  Countries intercepting 
                  this message might want to use their limited storage more wisely.

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