Apple has released its latest report on government information requests, showing how many times it has been asked to hand over data on its users over the six month span running from July to December 2015.
At a time when Apple was increasingly finding itself at odds with the Justice Department over the topic of encryption (something which exploded earlier this year with the San Bernardino shooting case), U.S. law enforcement made requests relating to 5,192 individual Apple accounts.
In these, Apple provided non-content data from 509 accounts, and “some” content relating to a total of 322. In total, Apple revealed data in 82 percent of U.S. account requests, objecting to 116 cases.
In terms of lost or stolen devices, Apple says that it received 4,000 separate filings from U.S. agencies regarding a total of 16,112 devices. Apple complied with 80 percent of these requests.
The company also received between 1,250 and 1,499 national security orders during the time frame, relating to somewhere between 1,000 and 1,249 customers. It received no bulk data orders.
Finally, Apple was handed 178 worldwide emergency requests for information involving situations where there is an emergency involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury. 108 of this total 178 orders came from the U.S.
You can check out the rest of the document, which includes data for every country Apple operates in, here.
Given that Apple has been outspoken on the issue of privacy, the company takes some time in the report to be transparent about how it chooses whether or not to answer data requests.
“For government information requests, we report as much detail as we are legally allowed,” the report states. “When we receive an account request from law enforcement requesting a customer’s personal information, we will notify the customer a request concerning their personal data was made unless we are explicitly prohibited from doing so. We are reserving the right to make exceptions, such as for extreme situations when we believe disclosing information could put a child or other person in serious danger, or where notice is not applicable to the underlying facts of the case.”
Apple additionally points out that any government agency demanding customer content from Apple must first request and receive a search warrant, which is then carefully reviewed by Apple’s legal team. “We only comply with information requests once we are satisfied that the request is valid and appropriate, and then we deliver the narrowest possible set of information,” the company writes.
Source: Apple
Via: AI
