For years now, many Silicon Valley companies have attempted to be more transparent about corporate practices concerning legal government requests for user data. A handful of major firms, including Google, Yahoo, Twitter, and others, are actively fighting at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for permission to tell the public more about the types of US law enforcement orders that they must comply with.

In an unusual move on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California partnered with major investment firms that have stakes in AT&T and Verizon, hoping to use those firms' influence to encourage transparency reports from those major telecommunications companies.

Just last week, Google posted its latest transparency report, noting that US government requests for data (from local, state, and federal authorities) have reached 21,683 users between January through June 2013.

According to the ACLU, the AT&T shareholder proposal (PDF) is filed jointly with the The New York State Common Retirement Fund and Trillium Asset Management LLC, and the Verizon proposal (PDF) is filed with Trillium Asset Management LLC, Park Foundation, and CleanYield Asset Management. The telecom firms likely believe that they are safer if they do not say anything at all.

The civil liberties advocacy group wrote: