Eight tech companies have called on the government to limit spying to specific targets, overhaul the country's secret spy courts, and let service providers publish more detailed information about surveillance requests.

Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn issued an open letter to President Obama and Congress last night while taking out full-page ads in The New York Times and other newspapers.

The companies outline five steps they believe governments around the world should take and called on the US to pave the way by implementing them first. They said "governments should limit surveillance to specific, known users for lawful purposes and should not undertake bulk data collection of Internet communications." There should be a clear legal framework to regulate spying, and "[r]eviewing courts should be independent and include an adversarial process, and governments should allow important rulings of law to be made public in a timely manner so that the courts are accountable to an informed citizenry."

Companies should be allowed to "publish the number and nature of government demands for user information," the companies said on their website, reformgovernmentsurveillance.com. "In addition, governments should also promptly disclose this data publicly."

Data should flow freely across borders, with companies and people able to access "lawfully available information that is stored outside of the country." Also, "[g]overnments should not require service providers to locate infrastructure within a country’s borders or operate locally." Finally, governments should create "a robust, principled, and transparent framework to govern lawful requests for data across jurisdictions" because the laws of countries could conflict with each other.

Further Reading Tech giants ask surveillance court for more latitude on disclosures

This isn't the first time some of these companies have collaborated to change the government's spying process. In September, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo "petitioned the notoriously secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the right to be more specific on the types of legal requests it receives from the government," as we reported at the time

With this latest effort, the companies appear to hope that Congress might take some action. Last week, Obama said he intends to "initiate some reforms to give people more confidence," but he didn't say what those will be.

In the letter to Obama and Congress, the tech companies said, "We are focused on keeping users’ data secure—deploying the latest encryption technology to prevent unauthorized surveillance on our networks and by pushing back on government requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope.

"We urge the US to take the lead and make reforms that ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent, and subject to independent oversight."