Apple has released its latest bi-annual transparency report, providing an overview of requests by government agencies and private parties for customer data from January 2017 to June 2017. While the latest report shows that overall data requests have dropped over the past year, it also reveals a spike in the number of U.S.
Government data requests under FISA and National Security Letters.
Specifically, in the U.S. Apple received 4,479 requests for 8,958 devices, providing data in 3,565 cases, basically fulfilling 80 percent of the requests received.
This compares to 30,814 requests from 233,052 devices worldwide, although the ratio of requests made to requests fulfilled was about the same. However, Apple noted that it received between 13,250 and 13,499 National Security Orders affecting 9,000 to 9,249 accounts — a sharp increase from last year’s 2,750 – 2,999 orders affecting 2,000 – 2,249 accounts (by law, Apple is only permitted to disclose a range of requests, not specific numbers).
