US: Yahoo this week joined Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook in revealing the number of user data requests it has received from law enforcement agencies.
The Internet firm received between 12,000 and 13,000 requests for user information between Dec. 1, 2012 and May 31, including those made via the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
"The most common of these requests concerned fraud, homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations," CEO Marissa Mayer and Ron Bell, Yahoo's general counsel, said in a statement.
"Like all companies, Yahoo cannot lawfully break out FISA request numbers at this time because those numbers are classified; however, we strongly urge the federal government to reconsider its stance on this issue," Mayer and Bell said.
Under FISA, the government can order companies to turn over data, but those companies are not at liberty to publicly disclose those requests. Thus, companies like Yahoo reached an arrangement with the feds whereby they can broadly reveal the number of secret, government requests, but only if they are lumped in with other, less sensitive data.
FISA has been in the news lately ever since NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked classified documents to The Guardian, which he said are proof of widespread and unnecessary surveillance of U.S. citizens.
President Obama defended the NSA's work recently, arguing that the agency has helped stop terrorist attacks. He acknowledged, however, that there are privacy trade-offs when it comes to such high-tech surveillance.
Yahoo, meanwhile, said that later this summer it will start releasing more details about user data requests, just as Google, Microsoft, and Twitter already do. Its first transparency report will cover the first half of 2013; "we will refresh this report with current statistics twice a year," Mayer and Bell wrote.
Yesterday, Apple said it received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement officials between Dec. 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013, covering between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices. Last week, Microsoft and Facebook revealed the same information. During the last six months in 2012, Microsoft received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts. Facebook, meanwhile, received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests related to 18,000 to 19,000 accounts.
Google has not released this data because it reportedly wants to have the freedom to break out the national-security related data, as does Twitter.
The NSA whistleblower, meanwhile, held a Q&A on The Guardian's website yesterday, during which he defended his actions. At 10 a.m. this morning, the House Intelligence Committee will also host NSA Director Keith Alexander during an open hearing on Capitol Hill. |
