Apple (AAPL) Releases Report on Government Information Requests

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) issues report on government information requests.

We believe that our customers have a right to understand how their personal information is handled, and we consider it our responsibility to provide them with the best privacy protections available. Apple has prepared this report on the requests we receive from governments seeking information about individual users or devices in the interest of transparency for our customers around the world.

This report provides statistics on requests related to customer accounts as well as those related to specific devices. We have reported all the information we are legally allowed to share, and Apple will continue to advocate for greater transparency about the requests we receive.

Apple offers customers a single, straightforward privacy policy that covers every
Apple product. Customer privacy is a consideration from the earliest stages of
design for all our products and services. We work hard to deliver the most secure
hardware and software in the world, including such innovative security solutions
as Find My iPhone and Touch ID, which have made the iPhone both more secure
and more convenient.

Perhaps most important, our business does not depend on collecting personal
data. We have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers.
We protect personal conversations by providing end-to-end encryption over
iMessage and FaceTime. We do not store location data, Maps searches, or Siri
requests in any identifiable form.

At the time of this report, the U.S. government does not allow Apple to
disclose, except in broad ranges, the number of national security orders, the
number of accounts affected by the orders, or whether content, such as emails,
was disclosed. We strongly oppose this gag order, and Apple has made the case
for relief from these restrictions in meetings and discussions with the White
House, the U.S. Attorney General, congressional leaders, and the courts. Despite
our extensive efforts in this area, we do not yet have an agreement that we feel
adequately addresses our customers’ right to know how often and under what
circumstances we provide data to law enforcement agencies.

We believe that dialogue and advocacy are the most productive way to bring
about a change in these policies, rather than filing a lawsuit against the U.S.
government. Concurrent with the release of this report, we have filed an Amicus
brief at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) in support of
a group of cases requesting greater transparency. Later this year, we will file a
second Amicus brief at the Ninth Circuit in support of a case seeking greater
transparency with respect to National Security Letters. 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. We
will continue to aggressively pursue our ability to be more transparent.

Like many companies, Apple receives requests from law enforcement agencies
to provide customer information. As we have explained, any government agency
demanding customer content from Apple must get a court order.¹ When we receive
such a demand, our legal team carefully reviews the order. If there is any question
about the legitimacy or scope of the court order, we challenge it. Only when we are
satisfied that the court order is valid and appropriate do we deliver the narrowest
possible set of information responsive to the request.

Unlike many other companies dealing with requests for customer data from
government agencies, Apple’s main business is not about collecting information.
As a result, the vast majority of the requests we receive from law enforcement seek
information about lost or stolen devices, and are logged as device requests. These
types of requests frequently arise when our customers ask the police to assist them
with a lost or stolen iPhone, or when law enforcement has recovered a shipment of
stolen devices.

Only a small fraction of the requests that Apple receives seek personal information
related to an iTunes, iCloud, or Game Center account. Account-based requests
generally involve account holders’ personal data and their use of an online service in
which they have an expectation of privacy, such as government requests for customer
identifying information, email, stored photographs, or other user content stored
online. Apple logs these as account requests.

We believe it is important to differentiate these categories and report them
individually. Device requests and account requests involve very different types of
data. Many of the device requests we receive are initiated by our own customers
working together with law enforcement. Device requests never include national
security–related requests.

The following tables detail the account requests and device requests Apple received
from law enforcement agencies between January 1, 2013, and June 30, 2013.

Table 1 shows account requests. The U.S. government has given us permission to
share only a limited amount of information about these orders, with the requirement
that we combine national security orders with account-based law enforcement
requests and report only a consolidated range in increments of 1000.

The most common account requests involve robberies and other crimes or requests
from law enforcement officers searching for missing persons or children, finding a
kidnapping victim, or hoping to prevent a suicide. Responding to an account request
usually involves providing information about an account holder’s iTunes or iCloud
account, such as a name and an address. In very rare cases, we are asked to provide stored photos or email.
We consider these requests very carefully and only provide
account content in extremely limited circumstances.

Table 2 shows device requests. Even though device requests have not been the focus of public debate, we are disclosing them to make our report as comprehensive as possible. These may include requests for the customer contact information provided to register a device with Apple or the date the device first used Apple services. We count devices based on the individual serial numbers related to an investigation.

For further information about data in these tables, please see the glossary below.





Notes
Apple keeps track of every request we receive. Some countries are not listed in this report because Apple has not received any information requests from the government there.The number of affected accounts and devices is often larger than the number of requests because law enforcement may seek information related to multiple accounts or devices. For example, some device requests related to the theft of a shipment may involve hundreds of serial numbers. In cases where no data was disclosed, Apple may have objected to a government request for legal reasons or searched our records and discovered that we have no relevant information. This category includes multiple scenarios in which no data was disclosed.Apple has never received an order under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. We would expect to challenge such an order if served on us.

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