US Dept. of Justice announces new deal with tech majors allowing wider snoop-data requests disclosure

The US Department of Justice has reportedly announced a new deal with major tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook, allowing them unprecedented levels of disclosure about government's snoop-data requests to general public.

The new deal would also allow each company to publicly announce the number of FISA requests and national security letters, both in the bands of 250 or 100, it has received in a given year, as well as the total number of users affected.

According to The Verge, the order was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder, who pointed that it was the outcome of President Barack Obama's formal announcement of changes to the NSA's alleged mass surveillance activities.

After the NSA revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, tech companies were forced to publish transparency reports stating the number of snoop-data requests demanded by the government, but were not allowed to publish in-depth reports.

The report said that the new order would be applicable to phone companies as well and institute a two-year buffer for any new company or existing company receiving FISA orders.

In response to the order, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and LinkedIn announced that they were withdrawing their motion against the FISA court and said that they would continue to encourage Congress to take additional steps to address the needed reforms, the report added.