Tech giants shed light on NSA data requests

Tech giants Facebook, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Yahoo have released updated reports on the number of government requests for information on their users.

Microsoft said that between January and June 2013, the company received less than 1,000 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests related to between 15,000 and 15,999 accounts. As Microsoft noted, these requests do not necessarily mean that more than 15,000 people were part of these data requests because one user may have multiple Microsoft accounts.

The company also said it received less than 1,000 National Security Letter requests covering fewer than 1,000 accounts. National Security Letters, or NSL, are subpoenas issued by the FBI and often pertain to federal crimes.

Facebook reported that between January and June 2013 the company received between 5,000 and 6,000 FISA requests and less than 1,000 NSL requests.

LinkedIn seems to have received the smallest number of requests from the government. “As you can see in the updated Transparency Report, we have received between 0 and 249 national security-related requests, impacting between 0 and 249 accounts, for the time period between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013,” LinkedIn’s lawyer, Erika Rottenberg, wrote on the company’s website.

Yahoo noted that the number of Yahoo accounts involved in requests from government agencies around the globe added up to “less than one one-hundredth of one percent” of the company’s worldwide user base. As Yahoo wrote, the most recent FISA requests by the government will not be made public for six months because of a mandatory delay imposed by the US government. The company said these numbers would be updated by the fall of 2014.

In Apple’s report, which was released last week, the company said it had been working directly with the White House, the U.S. attorney general, congressional leaders and the Department of Justice to advocate for more transparency with national security orders it receives.

“We believe strongly that our customers have the right to understand how their personal information is being handled,” Apple wrote in a statement. “We are pleased the government has developed new rules that allow us to more accurately report law enforcement orders and national security orders in the U.S.”

Google said in its report that the company received less than 1,000 requests during the first six months of 2013, which affected less than 10,000 user accounts. Between July and December of 2012, Google saw 1,000 requests that affected less than 13,000 user accounts.

Apple said it received 927 law enforcement requests for 2,330 accounts. The company added that it complied with 80 percent of those requests, disclosing data to government officials. “This data represents every US national security order for data about our customers regardless of geography,” Apple said. “We did not receive any orders for bulk data.” A privacy advocate said the new information is still too thin on details.

“These reports are a small step in the right direction, but they’re not nearly enough to allow the public to judge for itself the full extent of government surveillance - especially since they tell us nothing about spying done without technology companies’ knowledge,” Alex Abdo, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an email. “The limited information that can be gleaned from the reports suggests that the government is using its spying powers extremely broadly, likely infringing on the privacy rights of many innocent Americans.”

Last year, Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, began leaking documents that detailed the vast scope of the NSA’s surveillance of Internet activity.

NYT