Apple joins peers in sharing data about government requests for data


By SB Anderson

Aggregate transparency data

Another major technology company is now releasing regular “transparency reports” describing the number of times government agents have sought customer information from it.

Apple’s “Report on Government Information Requests (PDF),” released on Tuesday, shows it is a minnow compared to other big players when it comes to such requests. (See chart above).

We imported Apple’s data into a spreadsheet. You can sort and download it here.

In the first half of this year, U.S. law enforcement agencies filed between 1,000 and 2,000 requests for information affecting 2,000 to 3,000 accounts. That is between 5 and 11 requests a day, compared to almost 70 for Yahoo and Facebook. Because the data includes those related to national security, companies are required by law to only release ranges of numbers and not specifics if the data as mingled with non-national security-related numbers.

Apple said it disclosed customer data or content data in up to half the requests and rejected it up to half the time (0 to 1,000 in both cases).

“The most common account requests involve robberies and other crimes or requests from law enforcement officers searching for missing persons or children, finding a kidnapping victim, or hoping to prevent a suicide,” Apple said. “Responding to an account request usually involves providing information about an account holder’s iTunes or iCloud account, such as a name and an address. In very rare cases, we are asked to provide stored photos or email. We consider these requests very carefully and only provide account content in extremely limited circumstances.”

The US by far made most of the requests, with No. 2 the UK at 127 affecting 141 accounts.

The US also led in the number of times it asked Apple for information about one of its devices, logging 3,542 requests involving 8,605 devices. In 88% of those cases, some information was released. Germany with 2,156 requests was second.

“Device requests and account requests involve very different types of
data. Many of the device requests we receive are initiated by our own customers working together with law enforcement,” Apple noted in its report. “Device requests never include national
security–related requests.”

Part of the reason that one of the very largest tech companies gets among the fewest government inquiries: Apple says it’s not in the customer information gathering business.

“We have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers. We protect personal conversations by providing end-to-end encryption over iMessage and FaceTime. We do not store location data, Maps searches, or Siri requests in any identifiable form.”