Despite Justice Department objections, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft plan to expand their policies on notifying customers whose data has been requested by law enforcement, says a report.

The news comes as a digital-rights organization gets set to release an influential privacy scorecard, and as bad publicity still hangs in the air regarding potential cooperation between tech firms and the US National Security Agency.

The customer notifications apparently wouldn't apply to requests made by the NSA, or requests involving national security letters -- administrative subpoenas -- issued by the FBI, says a Washington Post report.

"The changing tech company policies do not affect data requests approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which are automatically kept secret by law," the Post notes, referring to the special court that oversees the NSA's controversial surveillance programs. (Those programs, of course, were made commonly known by Edward Snowden's leaking of top secret agency documents last summer). National security letters are also kept mum by default, the Post adds.

But other police requests for email records and online data would be covered, unless accompanied by a court-approved gag order.

The US Department of Justice says the notifications could tip off criminals and help them avoid prosecution, but a tech lawyer quoted by the Post says the change in policy would provide a check on wanton searches. "It serves to chill the unbridled, cost-free collection of data," the Post quotes attorney Albert Gidari Jr. as saying.

The Post cites unnamed company officials in reporting that Facebook and Microsoft are preparing policy changes. An Apple rep told the paper that the company would be updating its policy later in May "so that in most cases when law enforcement requests personal information about a customer, the customer will receive a notification."

Twitter routinely alerts customers about police requests for data, Yahoo announced changes in July, and Google put changes in place this week, the Post reports.

Digital-rights nonprofit The Electronic Frontier Foundation is preparing to release its annual "Who Has Your Back?" scorecard later this month. Last year, neither Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, nor Yahoo got a gold star in the "Tells users about government data requests" column of the report card, though Twitter and others did.

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Tech firms to increase alerts about police requests for data -- report