microsoft-building99Microsoft is now joining fellow tech giants Google and Facebook in asking the U.S. government for more transparency in regard to government requests for national security information.

Microsoft issued this statement a short while ago, noting that it would like to provide more information than what showed up in the company’s 2012 Law Enforcement Request Report published last March.

“Permitting greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security requests, including FISA orders, would help the community understand and debate these important issues,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “Our recent Report went as far as we legally could and the government should take action to allow companies to provide additional transparency.”

Given Microsoft’s recent attacks on Google, the search giant poked fun at Microsoft with this tweet:

The request comes in light of a government program called PRISM that allegedly gave the U.S. government broad access to nine tech company servers for purposes of U.S. intelligence gathering. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others continue to deny their involvement.

The ACLU today sued the Obama administration for violating the First and Fourth amendments in a separate privacy case, this one involving a phone surveillance program with Verizon Wireless.

Previously on GeekWire: Amazon noticeably (and admirably?) absent from cyber-spying controversy

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