Transparency Reports Are in Trouble

guest · Sep 29, 2019

Transparency Reports Are in Trouble
More and more companies are failing to tell consumers how much of their information governments have demanded
September 29, 2019
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/what-happened-transparency-reports/599035/

Google pioneered the concept of the transparency report in 2010 [...]
Within the next two years, transparency reporting had spread to almost every large tech firm with a large consumer business—not just Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, but even more politics-averse corporations such as Amazon and the largest telecom carriers.

Digital-rights advocates routinely point to transparency reports as an essential tool to hold companies accountable for defending their customers when governments ask for their information or the disappearance of their speech.

But these days, companies are turning away from transparency reports. Corporate transactions have shuffled tens of millions of customers to service providers who don’t practice transparency reporting, while other tech firms have quietly dropped the practice or weakened their support for it.

“The momentum has faded,” says Peter Micek, general counsel with Access Now. The digital-rights advocacy group is updating its index of transparency reports, which it last posted in 2016, and this pending revision will document serious stagnation in these disclosures.
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Meanwhile, firms that didn’t adopt transparency reports during the post-Snowden stampede seem in no rush now.
Payment platforms also still tend to shy away from transparency reporting [...]
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Access Now: Transparency Reporting Index

Transparency reporting is one of the strongest ways for technology companies to disclose threats to user privacy and free expression. Such reports educate the public about company policies and safeguards against government abuses, and contribute to an understanding of the scope and scale of online surveillance, network disruptions, content removal, and a host of other practices impacting our fundamental rights.

The following Index features a record of transparency reports from today’s leading internet companies and telcos. We encourage more companies to join this trend toward openness in order to build trust and strengthen user rights online.
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mirimir · Sep 29, 2019

They're cool and all. But you can't report NSLs until years later, if at all, so

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