Apple doesn’t want to let Big Brother (Government) into your iPhone through a backdoor in the phone security. The Obama administration is trying to force Apple to allow the government to access phones that have security features enabled. Apple CEO Tim Cook is going to appeal a court order to allow the government into the iPhone of a radical Islamist who shot dead a number of co-workers in San Bernardino California earlier this year.

Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of NSA snooping activities led to a strong clamor for greater transparency. The giants of Silicon Valley have had to cooperate with the government whenever there was a request for data but now they are emboldened to push back. They demand clearer guidelines on what can constitutes a legal request. They also want to be able to reveal the exact number of US surveillance requests, their nature, and the scope of their effects on users.

In a landmark deal, the companies and the government agreed on a compromise solution in which the public may be informed of information requests but only under layers of obstruction.
The figures cannot be given in exact form but rather in a range that is narrowed down to the nearest thousands. The kinds of data being asked cannot be revealed. There will also have to be a significant delay between the sending of the requests and the publishing of these quantities. Right now, this stands at six months.

A lawsuit filed in Maryland wants the NSA to end a program that it uses to tap into Internet streams and grab sensitive data on those connections. The suit, led by Wikimedia Foundation, filed on Tuesday is the latest against the agency and their unconstitutional spying programs involving US citizens discovered in the leaked documents stolen by government contractor Edward Snowden.