A transparency report is a statement issued semesterly or annually by a company or government, which discloses a variety of statistics related to requests for user data, records, or content.
Transparency reports generally disclose how frequently and under what authority governments have requested or demanded data or records over a certain period of time.
[1] Additionally, the United States Intelligence Community began releasing their Annual Statistical Transparency Report in 2013, in an attempt to raise public opinion following the leaks.
[2] Today, transparency reports are issued by a variety of technology and communications companies, including Google, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Twitter, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Yahoo, Uber, Amazon, T-Mobile, Discord, Reddit, and CloudFlare.
Access Now claims that transparency reports are "one of the strongest ways for technology companies to disclose threats to user privacy and free expression," and are tools vital to safeguard against abuses of power.
Critics of this policy, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that there is no clear national security justification for blocking entities from releasing this information.
Google legal director Richard Salgado accepted that the government has to fight crime and deal with threats, but the opposition of data demands need to be considered as well.
To maintain public confidence in both government and technology, we need legislative reform that ensures surveillance powers are transparent, reasonably scoped by law, and subject to independent oversight."
[11] Transparency reports play a vital role in promoting greater accountability and openness, but they are not immune to data discrepancies.
These discrepancies can arise from a variety of sources, including human error, technical glitches, misinterpretation of data, and inconsistencies in reporting.
When data discrepancies occur, they can significantly erode the effectiveness of transparency reports, as stakeholders may question the accuracy and reliability of the information presented.
The Transparency Report which would reveal how many national security letters (NSLs) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders Twitter receives.
The response form FBI for its stance is that the information Twitter wants to publish "is classified and cannot be publicly released", they also said according to the framework provided on 27 January 2014, Twitter is only permitted to qualify its description of the total number of accounts affected by all national security legal process it has received but it cannot quantify that description with specific detail that goes well beyond what is allowed under the 27th Jan 2014 framework and that discloses properly classified information.
The inspiration of the report comes from the recent surveillance program leaks from former NSA-contractor Edward Snowden, according to an anonymous source speaking with the Washington Post.