Apple issued its twice yearly transparency report on government data requests, showing another sharp increase in U.S. national security-related requests. Apple said it received as many as 16,249 national security requests affecting up to 8,249 accounts during the second half of 2017. The number of requests rose 20 percent compared with the first half of 2017, when Apple received 13,499 such requests. National security requests to Alphabet Inc's Google rose 36 percent, to almost 51,000. Facebook and Google have not yet reported full numbers of national security requests for the second half of 2017 because both companies break out individual figures for both National Security Letters and requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

Source: dna May 26, 2018 11:19 UTC