Google charges feds $25 a head for user surveillance

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/18/microsoft_does_not_charge_for_government_surveillance/

Google charges feds $25 a head for user surveillance

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Microsoft charges zilch

By Cade Metz in San Francisco b" Get more from this author

Posted in ID, 18th November 2010 23:22 GMT

Microsoft does not charge for government surveillance of its users, whereas
Google charges $25 per user, according to a US Drug Enforcement Admission
document turned up by security and privacy guru Christopher Soghoian.

With a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Soghoian has exposed four
years of DEA spending on wiretaps and pen registers. A wiretap grabs actual
telephone or Internet conversations, whereas a pen register merely grabs
numbers and addresses that show who's doing the communicating.

In 2010, the document shows, the DEA paid ISPs, telcos, and other
communication providers $6.7 million for pen registers and $6.5 million for
wiretaps. Pen register payments more than tripled over the past three years
and nearly doubled over the past two. Wiretap payments stayed roughly the
same.

The documents confirm that Microsoft does not charge for surveillance. "There
are no current costs for information requested with subpoenas, search
warrants, pen registers, or Title II collection [wiretaps] for Microsoft
Corporation," they say. But they show that Google charges $25 and Yahoo! $29.

As Soghoain points out, Google and Yahoo! may make more money from
surveillance than they get directly from their email users. Basic Google and
Yahoo! email accounts are free. Department of Justice documents (PDF) show
that telcos may charge as much as $2,000 for a pen register.

On the one hand, Microsoft could be commended for choosing not to make a
single penny from government surveillance. But on the other, Soghoian says,
the company should at least charge that penny, as that would create a paper
trail. "You don't like companies to make money spying on their customers,
they should charge something," Soghoian tells us. "You can't FOIA Microsoft's
invoices, because they don't send any invoices."

Most wiretap orders in the US involve narcotics cases, so DEA spending likely
accounts for a majority of wiretap spending.