We recently reported that companies such as Microsoft and Facebook have come out with detailed numbers regarding the government data requests they have received over six months. Now, Apple has followed suite, revealing the government requests it has received between Dec 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013.
The revelation of such information is an attempt by different tech companies to placate the concerns of the users. In the wake of the PRISM leaks, users have been skeptical of the role of the tech companies, fearing that the companies voluntarily handed over the data of the users to government agencies.
The tech companies have vehemently denied such a possibility. Now, after asking the US government to allow them greater transparency towards these data requests, these companies have started publishing the exact statistics regarding the government requests they receive.
According to Apple, during the aforementioned six months, it has received 4,000 – 5,000 data requests from the US government. These requests were specific to a total of 9,000 – 10,000 accounts or devices. However, the tech titan stopped short of revealing exactly how many requests it has received from NSA alone. It did reveal, though, that most of these data requests were received from the police.
It is a good attempt by the tech companies to maintain greater transparency about the number of government data requests they receive. This would go a long way in keeping the users informed as well as keeping the government in check so that the intelligence agencies do not overdo their task of monitoring for the sake of security.
Source: Apple
Courtesy: CNET
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