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| A poster supporting Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA) who leaked revelations of US electronic surveillance, is displayed at Hong Kong’s financial Central district June 17, 2013. (Reuters Photo/Bobby Yip) |
Washington.
US tech giant Apple revealed on Monday that it received between 4,000 and 5,000
data requests in six months from US authorities, days after Facebook and
Microsoft released similar information.
Apple,
Facebook, Microsoft and several other top Internet and technology companies
have come under heightened scrutiny since word leaked of a vast, covert
Internet surveillance program US authorities insist targets only foreign terror
suspects and has helped thwart attacks.
In a
statement on its web site, Apple said in the period between December 1, 2012
and May 31, 2013, US law enforcement had requested customer information up to
5,000 times, related to between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices.
Most
commonly, these requests were related to criminal investigations, searches for
missing children or patients with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a
suicide, Apple said.
But the
iPhone maker said it works vigorously to protect the privacy of its users and
only provides information by court order.
“Regardless
of the circumstances, our legal team conducts an evaluation of each request
and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of
information to the authorities,” it said, noting that sometimes the requests
were denied altogether.
Apple also
specified certain types of communications are protected, such as FaceTime and
iMessage conversations, which are “protected by end-to-end encryption so no one
but the sender and receiver can see or read them.”
“Apple
cannot decrypt that data,” the statement said.
“Similarly,
we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri
requests in any identifiable form.”
Facebook
said Friday it had received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data
affecting 18,000 to 19,000 accounts during the second half of last year, while
Microsoft said it had received 6,000 to 7,000 requests affecting 31,000 to
32,000 accounts during the same period.
Both firms
said they were prohibited by law from listing a separate tally for
security-related requests or secret court orders concerning terror probes.
There has
been a public backlash for the tech companies since government contractor
Edward Snowden leaked details of PRISM, a vast program that saw nine companies
turn over user data to the US National Security Agency.
Leaked
details of the program — first published by Britain’s Guardian newspaper and
The Washington Post — have reignited debate over the trade-offs between privacy
and security more than a decade after the September 11 attacks.
The
companies have denied claims the NSA could directly access their servers. US
authorities have said the program was legal and limited.
FBI
Director Robert Mueller told lawmakers last week the program could have
prevented 9/11 and said the leaks had caused “significant harm to our nation
and to our safety.”
He also
confirmed that Snowden was the subject of a criminal investigation.
Snowden, a
29-year-old IT technician, has gone to ground in Hong Kong, where he had
surfaced for media interviews after the leaks were published. He has vowed to
contest any extradition order in court.
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