Facebook and Yahoo asked a secret court Monday to allow them to disclose data on national security orders the companies have received under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The two tech companies filed separate, similar motions Monday with the secret court that oversees that law. Two other companies, Google and Microsoft, have similar motions pending with the court.
All four companies were among several US Internet businesses identified as giving the National Security Agency access to customer data under the program known as PRISM. Facebook and Yahoo say they want to correct false claims and reports about what they provide to the government. They argue they have a free-speech right to publish aggregate data on national security orders.
Revelations about the program by former NSA contractor Ed Snowden have prompted a broader debate about government monitoring and the privacy of Americans’ communications.
Both Facebook and Yahoo said that they had released information on combined law enforcement and national security requests from the government, but have been prohibited from specifying the number of national security orders.
“In light of Facebook’s over one billion active users and the generalised information included in the aggregate data, disclosure could not lead any user to infer that he or she is or has been the target of an order or directive,” Facebook wrote in its filing.
