The general counsel of a U.S. spying agency told a U.S. Senate committee Wednesday that if Internet companies provide information about the number of surveillance orders they receive for user data, it would alert the country's adversaries on which services to avoid.
The government defended its data collection and disclosure policies even as a representative from Google warned the senators that U.S. surveillance practices could lead to the break up of the Internet.
"Providing that information in that level of detail could provide our adversaries a detailed road map of which providers and which platforms to avoid in order to escape surveillance," said Robert Litt, general counsel in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Brad Wiegmann, deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice, in a prepared statement in connection with the Senate hearing on "The Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013."
The proposed legislation aims to bring greater transparency in data collection by the National Security Agency.
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