http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/technology/daily-report-the-feds-cant-resist-silicon-valleys-data.html 2016-10-06 18:29:05 Daily Report: The Feds Can’t Resist Silicon Valley’s Data They also don’t want anyone to talk about it, a fact that has riled a number of tech companies that are chafing under gag orders. === A gentle reminder: The Justice Department backing off demands that Apple help it break the security of an iPhone six months ago does not mean law enforcement isn’t still very interested in the information gathered and protected by tech companies. And the feds would very much like to keep what they are looking for a secret. On Tuesday, Open Whisper Systems, maker of the widely used Signal encryption app, detailed how the Justice Department wanted access to all sorts of information related to its user accounts connected to telephone numbers. The company was also put under a gag order for a year. Open Whisper Systems, working with lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, successfully fought the gag order. But investigators were barking up the wrong tree since the company actually stores very little information about its users. Yahoo, on the other hand, is a different story. As Tech companies say they do not take issue with assisting in law enforcement investigations — though the scale of the Yahoo email scanning is jarring. What they do take issue with is the secrecy demanded of them. In many cases, these government gag orders are open-ended, meaning the companies are never allowed to talk about them. Never is a long time. And Microsoft and Twitter have filed separate lawsuits in which they hope they can convince a judge or jury that “never” is also unacceptable.