For the First Time, Apple Reveals Thousands of Police Requests, Claims 'No Interest in Amassing' User Data

Apple published its first transparency report today, revealing the number of requests for information the company's received from governments and law enforcement, divided up by nation.

Surprise: the US blows everyone out of the water. According to the report, the company received between 1,000 and 2,000 inquiries for account data from government agencies in the US. By comparison, the second largest number of requests was 127 from the UK.

The transparency effort is the latest in the post-NSA scramble by major American tech companies to reassure customers worried about their online privacy. Apple’s report shows the number of data requests from user accounts and devices it received from January through June of this year.

Unfortunately the federal government forbids Apple from showing which requests were made in the name of national security. Thus, it requires the company release the number of inquries in extremely broad ranges, making them almost meaningless. For example, the report says Apple received between zero and 1,000 account requests from the Feds that resulted in user data being disclosed. Super helpful. It also means requests from, say, the NSA, are lumped in with requests from the local police trying to track a thief through his iPhone.

Apple says that it has never recieved a request through Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to collect the metadata of business records from phone companies like Verizon, but the company "would expect to challenge such an order if served on us.” And it uses the report makes a plea for greater transparency, but explains it hopes that can be acheived through a dialogue with lawmakers rather than having to resort to suing the federal government. Per the report:

We strongly oppose this gag order. Apple has made the case for relief from these restrictions in meetings and discussions with the White House, the US 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.

In July, shortly after the details of the NSA’s PRISM operation were exposed to the public, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other tech firms petitioned the government for the right to publish transparency reports exposing inquries made by federal agencies. Today’s Government Information Request paper is the first of its kind from Apple, though other companies have published similar transparency reports this year.

Apple also didn't miss the opportunity to take a bit of a dig at competitors like Google and Facebook, pointing out in the report that its business model doesn’t rely on collecting personal information about its users.

"Perhaps most important, we have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers," the company writes. "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."