This letter constitutes a request under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. §552. I am seeking records, invoices and any other information detailing the amount of money paid by the Department of Justice to major providers of Internet based services to compensate them for the time and resources used in responding to subpoenas, warrants, pen registers, trap & trace requests and national security letters.
Background
At the recent Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Washington DC, Alan Davidson, Google’s Director of Government Relations and Public Policy revealed to the audience that Google routinely charges the government for the time and resources spent responding to requests by the Government for Google customers’ data.
This practice is permitted by various statutes. For example, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2518(4) states that:
Any provider of wire or electronic communication service, landlord, custodian or other person furnishing such facilities or technical assistance shall be compensated therefor by the applicant for reasonable expenses incurred in providing such facilities or assistance.
Likewise, the 2008 Protect America Act amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to state:
The Director of National Intelligence and Attorney General may direct a person to …. immediately provide the Government with all information, facilities, and assistance necessary to accomplish the acquisition … The Government shall compensate, at the prevailing rate, a person for providing information, facilities, or assistance pursuant to subsection (e).
While Google is one of the first Internet based service providers to admit to this practice, it is likely that the practice is widespread.
My request
I request all records, invoices, memos and any other information detailing the amount of money paid by the Department of Justice to major providers of Internet based services to compensate them for the time and resources used in responding to subpoenas, warrants, pen registers, trap & trace requests and national security letters.
At the very least, this request shall include documents relating to Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace, America Online, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Sprint and T-Mobile.
The scope for this request shall include all documents created between January 01, 2006 and January 01, 2009.
After "Caught in the Cloud" and the letter to E. Schmidt, this is the next logical step. Using FOIA is just a brilliant strategy :)
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if there are other organizations that have paid this money. Basically do they all directly come out of DOJ budget or would they be able to say you didn't ask for money paid by FBI (which should be run by them, but I'm not sure that would fall under the specific request you made). Any how, I could be wrong, but it does seem to be one area that they could ding you on. Another that comes to mind is that DOJ might not be the only people doing this (NSA for example, CIA perhaps as well, the pentagon). Also, we might not even know the names of other agencies (e.g. NSA for its first several years).
ReplyDelete