Apple reveals more on secret data requests
Apple has thrown its weight behind Silicon Valley’s legal challenge to restrictions that the US government places on reporting its requests for customer information, publishing new data about thousands of such demands from authorities around the world. The disclosures by the world’s most valuable technology company follow fresh revelations about the extent of the US National Security Agency’s internet surveillance, which Google last week called "outrageous". At the same time as filing an amicus brief to a First Amendment case filed by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others earlier this year, Apple sought to distance its business model from internet firms which use customer data to sell advertising. "Perhaps most important, our business does not depend on collecting personal data," Apple said in Tuesday’s report. "We have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers." Apple is the first large US hardware manufacturer to reveal requests about customers’ individual devices but it has been slower than Google and others to provide details of how many internet user accounts it has handed over to authorities. In Apple’s first full account of its interactions with law enforcement, it said it received 12,442 requests from 41 countries in the first half of 2013 for information about its devices, such as when, where or by whom an iPhone or iPad was first activated. It complied with almost three quarters of those demands, including 3,110 in the US, 429 in China, 1,856 in Germany and 689 in the UK, the "vast majority" of which related to lost or stolen devices and "never" included national security-related requests, Apple said. A further 1,719-2,719 requests were made globally for customer account information, such as credit cards, email addresses, photos and telephone numbers for services such as iTunes. 1,000-2,000 came from the US and 127 from the UK. In a June letter to Apple’s head of privacy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the company could only provide this aggregated data in broad ranges of 1,000. Apple said it had joined a legal challenge by several leading US technology companies demanding permission to disclose more information. The case in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court came after leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed widespread secret data mining programmes by the NSA and associated agencies. "We feel strongly that the government should lift the gag order and permit companies to disclose complete and accurate numbers regarding FISA requests and National Security Letters," Apple said. "We will continue to aggressively pursue our ability to be more transparent." In June, Apple said it had received up to 5,000 requests from US law enforcement between December 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013, covering up to 10,000 accounts and devices. Personal conversations using its iMessage texting service and FaceTime video calling are encrypted, which goes some way towards preventing eavesdropping, and Apple anonymises data about users’ locations, Maps searches and interactions with Siri, the iPhone’s virtual assistant. "Customer privacy is a consideration from the earliest stages of design for all our products and services," Apple said. It said it refused to provide data when the scope of a government’s request was "excessively broad" or did not follow proper legal procedures. Last week, in the latest of a series of leaks by Mr Snowden, a former contractor for the US security services, it emerged that the NSA had sought to take intercept data wholesale from Google’s private fibre networks.