Apple and others back NSA, FBI transparency bills

Apple and a number of other technology companies have signed a letter supporting a pair of bills that would clarify the companies’ abilities to publish details on the government’s demands for user information. The bills — Senator Al Franken’s S. 1452, the Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013, and Representative Zoe Lofgren’s H.R. 3035, the Surveillance Order Reporting Act of 2013 — were introduced in August. Apple and other tech companies have been pushing for NSA transparency for some time. The Cupertino company immediately denied the NSA and FBI were mining its servers for data when the PRISM program came to light in June. [via The Verge]