The 141-page document serves as the official rulebook for the treatment and behavior of inmates held at the military prison (including WikiLeaks firestarter Chelsea Manning) and addresses everything from media contact with inmates to rules regarding their appearance and hygiene.
The FOIA request was intended to increase transparency regarding the U.S. Army’s regulation of USDB inmates held at Fort Leavenworth, to better inform the press about rules regarding their contact with prisoners and to shed light on the status of civil liberties within the prison’s walls.
You can view the entire document below:
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]]>Most of those cases resulted in the government getting at least some data, including e-mails, photos and uploaded files.
Friday’s was Yahoo’s first-ever transparency report and it says it will continue every six months. Twitter and Microsoft released their reports earlier this summer; Google, which has been releasing reports longer than the other major players, has yet to for the first half of 2013. (Related: The Washington Post reported this morning that Google has stepped-up its efforts to encrypt that data that moves between its servers in an attempt to thwart spying).
“Democracy demands accountability, and accountability requires transparency,” Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell wrote in a blog post on Friday. “We hope our report encourages governments around the world to more openly share information about the requests they make for users’ information.”
Yahoo reported that in about 8% of cases, either no data was found or Yahoo rejected the request. So in just over 9 in 10 cases, at least some data was turned over.
About half the time — 55% — that was “non-content data,” which Yahoo describes as “basic subscriber information including the information captured at the time of registration such as an alternate e-mail address, name, location, and IP address, login details, billing information, and other transactional information (e.g., “to,” “from,” and “date” fields from email headers).”
In nearly 2 in 5 cases, other content was turned over. Yahoo’s description: “Data that our users create, communicate, and store on or through our services. This could include words in a communication (e.g., Mail or Messenger), photos on Flickr, files uploaded, Yahoo Address Book entries, Yahoo Calendar event details, thoughts recorded in Yahoo Notepad or comments or posts on Yahoo Answers or any other Yahoo property.”
Yahoo reported about the same number of government requests as Facebook, but affecting substantially more user accounts — 40,300 vs. up to 21,000. Twitter reported 902 requests affecting 1,319 accounts for the first half of the year.
Germany, Italy, Taiwan and France filled out the Top 5 in number of requests after the U.S. Outside the U.S., requests totaled 17,026, involving 22,453 accounts.
The government requests usually involve criminal investigations and came come by way of warrant or subpoena. Yahoo says it only complies “in response to valid, compulsory legal process from a government agency with proper jurisdiction and authority.”
National security authorities also make the requests. All companies are restricted about how much they can say — even specific numbers — about requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yahoo and others have been pressing the government to allow them more freedom to divulge those details.
Countries that made the most data requests of Facebook in the fist half of 2013.
The report covers the first half of 2013 and says the U.S. made between 11,000 and 12,000 requests involving between 20,000 and 21,000 users or accounts. Facebook complied with 79% of those requests. The range for the U.S. vs. a specific number for other countries is believed to be because of U.S. requirements that requests involving national security can only be released in ranges. Facebook and several of its rivals are urging the government to allow specific numbers be released instead of ranges.
“We continue to push the United States government to allow more transparency regarding these requests, including specific numbers and types of national security-related requests. We will publish updated information for the United States as soon as we obtain legal authorization to do so,” Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said in releasing the data.
Facebook’s data seems to indicate a significant drop-off in the number of users or accounts from the second half of 2012. In first-ever data it released after the PRISM program details were first leaked by Edward Snowden earlier this year, it said it had received 9,000-10,000 requests involving 18,000-19,00 users or accounts between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2012. (See a table that summarizes data reports from a variety of companies).
Globally, Facebook said it has up to 26,607 requests involving 38,954 users in about 70 countries. The average compliance rate was 33%. India (3,245 requests and 4,144 users/accounts) and the United Kingdom (3,245/4,144) were No. 2 and No. 3 behind the U.S.
“The vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings,” Facebook’s Stretch said. “In many of these cases, these government requests seek basic subscriber information, such as name and length of service. Other requests may also seek IP address logs or actual account content. We have strict guidelines in place to deal with all government data requests.”
Facebook’s compliance rate is higher than Twitter’s (it reported 67% a few weeks ago) and is about the same as Microsoft, which reported about 80% for 2012, and is lower than Google’s most recently reported 88%, which itself was down from 94%.
Below is a sortable chart with all the Facebook data.
→ Earlier stories on transparency reports from our On the Beat column.
[field name=”FB-transparency”]
]]>From Jan. 1 to June 30, there were 902 requests from the U.S., making up about 78% of requests from all countries.
The number of users or accounts affected by those U.S. requests was up 15%, while the number of cases in which data was ultimately released was down slightly to 67%.
Similar transaprency reports from Google and Microsoft are expected soon. Those two and Twitter have been making regular updates on user data requests, with Google doing so the longest — and with the most detail.
The reports in recent months are of greater urgency given recent controversy over government surveillance.
Earlier this summer, a number of companies that had not traditionally been making regular releases about data requests issued reports in response to revelations that the National Security Administration was amassing enormous databases of online and phone activity. (View a table with that data here).
In the U.S., the percentage of requests that came via search warrant was up slightly while the number from subpoenas — the most common — was down by the same amount.
The U.S. accounts for about 4 out of 5 requests from around the world, although that number dropped slightly in the first half of 2013 as the number of non-US requests rose by nearly one-third.
Japan had the most requests after the U.S., but that was only 8% of total requests. In almost all cases, data is actually released to foreign countries at a much lower rate than in the U.S. The percentage for Japan, for example, was 16% compared to 67% in the U.S.
The chart below shows growth in global requests.
]]>Below is a summary of the latest data provided by the major online companies about how many requests they had received from U.S. law enforcement agencies for user information. Google, Microsoft and most recently Twitter had regularly been releasing “transparency reports” with such data; Apple, Facebook and Yahoo released general data in recent weeks in response to the controversy over National Security Agency monitoring activities. Sources for each company are listed at bottom.
| COMPANY | TIME PERIOD | REQUESTS | ACCOUNTS | NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| APPLE | 12/1/2012 to 5/31/2013 | 4,000-5,000 | 9,000-10,000 | From federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters. The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide. |
| 7/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 | 9,000-10,000 | 18,000-19,000 | From any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests). These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. | |
| 7/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 | 8,438 | 14,791 | Via Google Transparency Report. 69% from subpoena; 22% search warrant; 9% other, including court orders. Google is among the most forthcoming in details on government requests. | |
| GOOGLE (NSL) | 2012 | 0-999 | 1000–1999 | Google is among a few who release National Security Letters data. The data can only legally be released in aggregate tiers of 999. |
| MICROSOFT | 7/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 | 6,000-7,000 | 31,000-32,000 | Criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders from U.S. governmental entities (including local, state and federal). Microsoft had been releasing regular transparency data, along with Google and most recently, Twitter. |
| MICROSOFT (NSL) | 2012 | 0-999 | 1000–1999 | Microsoft, like Google, releases annual data on National Security Letters. The data can only legally be released in aggregate tiers of 999. |
| 7/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 | 815 | 1,145 | Via Twitter Transparency report. 60% from subpoenas; 19% warrants; 11% court order. | |
| YAHOO | 12/1/2012 to 5/31/2013 | 12,000-13,000 | N/A | Includes criminal, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and other requests. The most common of these requests concerned fraud, homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations. |
Compiled by SB Anderson from company releases
Sources
Updated 6/18/2013
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