Google Reveals More Details About FBI Gag Order

Since 2010, Google has been receiving letters from the Federal Bureau of Investigation pertaining to certain users and their information. These letters came in the form of National Security Letter, which is considered a rather indirect form of subpoena. Along with the demand to divulge information, the letters also came with a gag order, which meant that Google couldn’t tell anyone about them, until now.

The gag order was actually lifted back in October, Engadget reports, which Google immediately took as a chance to release one of the NSLs that the company received. This immediately caused a buzz, especially since the parameters with which the letter was released weren’t clearly established at the time.

Now, the conditions have become less vague, which allowed Google to release eight more NSLs sent by separate FBI agencies. The majority of the letters were apparently sent from the FBI field office at Charlotte, North Carolina. The rest came from offices in California, Florida, Arizona, and New York.

The eight letters also contained requests for the release of information on 23 account-holders at Google, with the details restricted to their “name, address and length of service." In the letters released by the tech company, the names of the account-holders were redacted by Google itself in an effort to protect the privacy of said users. Google revealed that the users in question were already made aware of the details of the subpoena as well.

In a blog post, the director of law enforcement and information security at Google, Richard Salgado wrote that the letters were released in order to maintain the level of transparency to which the company is committed. It would also appear that more letters will be revealed in due time.

“In our continued effort to increase transparency around government demands for user data, today we begin to make available to the public the National Security Letters (NSLs) we have received where, either through litigation or legislation, we have been freed of nondisclosure obligations,” the blog post reads.