Ed Snowden’s revelation that big tech companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft were in cahoots with the NSA to spy on people have these giants calling for transparency to clear their names.

The giants are part of an alliance which includes 63 companies, investors, non-profits and trade organizations calling upon President Obama and congressional leaders to allow Internet, telephone, and Web-based service providers to report national security-related requests for information with greater specificity.

The alliance is specifically asking for:

• The number of government requests for information about their users

• The number of individuals, accounts, or devices for which information was requested

• The number of requests that sought communications content, basic subscriber information, and/or other information.

They are also asking that the government issue its own transparency report so that the public will know if security measures being implemented are just.

“We seek permission for the same information to be made available regarding the government’s national security–related authorities. This information about how and how often the government is using these legal authorities is important to the American people, who are entitled to have an informed public debate about the appropriateness of those authorities and their use,” a copy of the letter obtained by AllThingsD reads.

Will transparency help?

But what would this call for transparency actually do?  Will it actually make any difference?  Or could this potentially backfire on the alliance?

According to SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto, nothing will actually change.  The government will still collect data from people, but at least the people will be aware of what is happening.  As for the potential to backfire, when NSAgate broke out, the trust that the public had in these providers was shattered.

“There’s a chance that this could backfire on them but it appears what they want, of course, is to be willing to take this level of information to make it public,” said Casaretto in an appearance on our Live NewsDesk Show.  “That’s what they are looking for – to have that opportunity, to have this play out in the public space where, as of right now,  everything is silent and nobody would really know that anything was going on and where they were in terms of compliance with these different actions and they’re just looking to have some information out there.”

Though the alliance’s call for transparency may seem like Snowden’s efforts are finally paying off, it should be noted that no action has been taken yet.  We’ll still have to see if the government will oblige to the transparency request.

For more of Casaretto’s Breaking Analysis, check out the NewsDesk video below:

photo credit: Bert Kaufmann via photopin cc