How many times per year do you think law enforcement asks Apple for its help accessing device or user information? 50 times? 100 times? Maybe 1,000 times?
Keep going. And going.
The FBI’s recent attempt to get Apple to help it access the contents of an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters may have been the most high profile case in recent memory, but it’s far from the only such request Apple has received from law enforcement.
According to Apple’s recently released Report of Government Information Requests, the tech giant received a total of 30,687 device requests and 1,813 account requests from law enforcement agencies worldwide in the second half of 2015.
Those totals include 4,000 device requests impacting more than 16,000 devices and 1,015 account requests impacting nearly 5,200 accounts from the United States alone. The U.S. device figures were up from 3,824 device requests in the first half of 2015, but down from 4,553 device requests in the second half of 2014.
It was Germany, however, that made the largest number of device requests in the second half of 2015, with 11,989.
Apple said device requests may include “requests for customer contact information provided to register a device with Apple or the date(s) the device used Apple services.” Account requests were defined as “providing information about an account holder’s iTunes or iCloud account, such as a name and an address,” though Apple said account requests sometimes ask it to “provide customers’ iCloud content, which may include stored photos, email, iOS device backups, documents, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks.”
Number of Requests Does Not Equal Number Impacted
While the number of device and account requests from U.S. law enforcement have remained relatively stable, though, the number of devices and accounts impacted by those requests has fluctuated drastically.
In the first half of 2013, Apple reported it received 3,542 device requests from U.S. officials impacting 8,605 devices. A year and a half later in the second half of 2014, the number of device requests rose only slightly to 4,553 but the number of devices impacted skyrocketed to 17,833.
A similar trend can be seen in the number of account requests and accounts impacted. In the second half of 2013, just 1,380 accounts were impacted by 638 account requests from U.S. law enforcement. In the second half of 2014, a whopping 5,267 accounts were impacted by only 788 requests.
In the second half of 2015, Apple said it provided “some data” for about 80 percent of device requests and 82 percent of account requests. Germany only received data for about 52 percent of its device requests, Apple said.
Additionally, Apple said it received between 1,250 and 1,499 National Security requests impacting between 1,000 and 1,249 accounts during the second half of 2015. Though it noted it would like to be more specific, Apple said the 250 figure range is the narrowest reporting bracket allowed under the law.
Notably, this figure is more than four times higher than the number of National Security requests Apple received two years ago in the second half of 2013, which was only 0 to 249.
Despite the flood of information requests, Apple stressed in the report it’s prioritization of customer privacy whenever possible.
“We only comply with information requests once we are satisfied that the request is valid and appropriate, and then we deliver the narrowest possible set of information,” the company wrote.