WASHINGTON D.C. ? President Obama has struck a tentative deal with major Internet companies allowing them to share more public details about how the government collects data on their customers.

The deal, announced Monday, must still be approved by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge. It would allow Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. , Apple Inc., Google Inc., LinkedIn Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to give more aggregate data about the demands they receive from the government, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Since June, when former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents showing the government had access to far more Internet and phone traffic than previously known, the companies have been under pressure from customers to explain what customer information they share with the U.S. government.

The new deal was completed late last week. Five of the companies were fighting the government in court, while Apple filed a “friend of the court” brief but didn’t formally join the litigation.

The deal aims to strike a balance between the government’s interest in not having the details of such requests revealed in a way that would help the targets of investigations and companies’ interest in responding to customers’ concerns about government monitoring of the Internet.

The terms would also apply to other companies that weren’t specifically part of the litigation, officials said.

Terms of the deal were negotiated principally between the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, and the general counsels for the tech companies, according to a U.S. official briefed on the discussions. In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said permitting the disclosures “addresses an important area of concern to communications providers and the public.” He said more work would be done on such privacy and security issues in coming weeks.

Under the new disclosure terms, companies could give out general figures for how often they get certain types of government demands for information, such as National Security Letters from the Federal Bureau of Investigation or court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Companies will have the option of reporting each individual category, as long as they report ranges of 1,000. So, for example, if a company receives 2,400 National Security Letter requests in a six-month period, they will report that they received between 2,000 and 3,000 such requests.

The companies would also be allowed to say, in similar general numbers, how many customer accounts are affected by the requests, the officials said. Companies would be allowed to share the number of law enforcement and National Security Letter requests they receive in real time, but there would be a six-month delay in reporting the number of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court requests.

Under an alternative option, companies could report more specific number ranges, in increments of 250 requests, but then they would have to lump a few categories together. So, for instance, if a company got 210 National Security Letters and 40 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders, they would report having received between 250 and 500 such requests in the six-month period.