Following whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks of National Security Agency documents pointing to mass online surveillance, both Facebook and Microsoft have released details on the number of legal orders made to them by the NSA. Only a few days after revelations of the surveillance program known as PRISM, which alleged major companies such as the social networking giant Facebook and software maker Microsoft, as well as others, had provided the NSA direct access to their server data, both companies released statements denying such involvement. On Friday both Microsoft and Facebook released more information regarding requests made by federal, state and local police in an effort to reassure users. The new information provided by Facebook and Microsoft detail the number of legal orders they received to disclose user data. According to Microsoft, in the last six months of 2012 it received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts. Facebook, meanwhile, has divulged a similar number of requests during the same period of time. “For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) - was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut - from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts,” said Facebook. rt/usa/microsoft-facebook-release-nsa-stats-738/
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:03:32 +0000
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