It’s a pretty striking list of companies that have come together asking for surveillance reform. AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo are household brands and also the victims of what must seem like lawless behaviour from UK and US security services.

After all, what these companies have learned from the Guardian and Edward Snowden is that even when the US secretly compels them hand over user data, under the programme known as Prism, the same agencies will try to steal their users' data by whatever means they can.

The NSA and GCHQ take data wholesale off Atlantic internet cables (Tempora in the UK) or by bugging private networks between companies’ data centres (such as the Muscular programme, harvesting our files held at Google and Yahoo). When they can’t get the data in their own countries, the security organisations hack into foreign networks. Just in case encryption and security get in the way, they’ll weaken that too.

The message seems to be that law enforcement sees any data source as fair game for harvesting. The NSA and GCHQ apparently believe they are entitled to any and all data, all of the time, wherever they might find it. They didn’t think the public should know about any of this, so secret courts and warrants were held to be best.

Understandably, the revelations have kicked off a debate calling for change, especially in the US, whose laws including the Foreign Intelligence and Security Act and the Patriot Act have enabled many of these programmes. In the UK, the parliamentary debate to consider reform of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and other laws has not really started.

The intervention of internet companies is important. They ask us, their users, to trust them with very sensitive data. Google and Facebook know pretty much everything about us worth knowing, from our interests to who our friends are. For their businesses to work, we need to know that they are not simply a very cheap way for GCHQ and the police to keep an eye on us.

The companies have tried to improve matters by publishing what they can about numbers of requests, but they are hampered by legal constraints.

Internet businesses have had their reputations damaged, and they are likely to be suffering financially. Many non-US companies will be much more reluctant to host their data in the US, precisely because their data is at risk of access for very wide purposes.

Many of the companies’ demands are similar to the principles that international NGOs and individuals are calling for at necessaryandproportionate.org – you can sign on to our call here. Both campaigns are asking for an end to bulk data collection.

Both call for full transparency over the numbers of requests and reasons; for accountable decision making and public court decisions; for international legal frameworks to govern data requests from law enforcement in one country to a company in another. Their call for laws that can be understood echo the legal challenge to the UK government that Open Rights Group is making with Big Brother Watch, English PEN and Constanze Kurz.

There are some areas on which business and civil society may disagree: the companies seem not to be calling for user notification, and civil society will want to know exactly what they think about secret courts. The companies have also highlighted some issues that they are particularly aware of, such as rejecting calls for "national" storage of data.

The demands for change now range from the UN general assembly to big business and civil society. Each show a widespread rejection of unaccountable and generalised mass surveillance, in favour of targeted surveillance based on clear and understandable legal frameworks, made accountable by full public information about their activities.

Now that civil society, internet businesses and the international community have stood up, and pressure for change mounts in the US, we need to see the same leadership from our own parliamentarians to have the debate about surveillance reform in the UK.