Who Has Your Back 2014: Protecting Your Data From Government Requests | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Who Has Your Back 2014: Protecting Your Data From Government Requests | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Major Findings in 2014 Report:
- Apple, CREDO Mobile, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sonic, Twitter, and Yahoo Top Chart, Receive 6 Stars Each
- Apple, Adobe, Internet Archive, Credo, Dropbox Facebook, Foursquare, Google, LinkedIn, Lookout, Microsoft, Pinterest, Sonic, SpiderOak, Tumblr, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wickr, WordPress, and Yahoo Promise to Give Notice to Users
- Apple, Yahoo Show Enormous Improvements in Government Access Policies
- Overwhelming Number of the Companies We Reviewed, even Major ISPs like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast Are Now Issuing Transparency Reports
- Majority of Tech Companies (but only one Telecom) Publicly Oppose Mass Surveillance
- CREDO Mobile Demonstrates That Telecom Companies Can Champion Transparency, Resistance to Government Access Requests
- Snapchat, AT&T, and Comcast Lag Behind Others in Industry
- In Wake of Snowden Disclosures, More Companies Revised Policies About Government Access to User Data
This year, we saw major improvements in industry standards for informing users about government data requests, publishing transparency reports, and fighting for the user in Congress. For the first time in our four years of Who Has Your Back reports, every company we reviewed earned credit in at least one category. This is a significant improvement over our original report in 2011, when neither Comcast, Myspace, Skype, nor Verizon received any stars.
These changes in policy were likely a reaction to the releases of the last year, which repeatedly pointed to a close relationship between tech companies and the National Security Agency. Tech companies have had to work to regain the trust of users concerned that the US government was accessing data they stored in the cloud. This seems to be one of the legacies of the Snowden disclosures: the new transparency around mass surveillance has prompted significant policy reforms by major tech companies.