Apple peels off its first post-PRISM transparency report - Inquirer ~ Electronic Gadgets

GADGET DESIGNER Apple has released its first post-PRISM transparency report, and said that it is not in the data collection business.

Apple has joined other firms including Microsoft and Google in releasing transparency reports since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance.

It's relatively late to the report party, but it has already spoken out about PRISM, and posted up a statement in the early days of summer.

"Two weeks ago, when technology companies were accused of indiscriminately sharing customer data with government agencies, Apple issued a clear response: We first heard of the government's 'PRISM' program when news organizations asked us about it on June 6. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order," it said then in a statement.

"Like several other companies, we have asked the US government for permission to report how many requests we receive related to national security and how we handle them. We have been authorized to share some of that data, and we are providing it here in the interest of transparency."

Then it said that most of the requests it receives are related to police investigations, and it counted 5,000 requests covering 10,000 accounts and devices in a six month period ending in May.

The latest report (PDF), that covers the period between 1 January and 30 June 30, 2013, has more informantion. Apple says that it builds security into its products and does not have the same sort of business model as its rivals do that could affect its users.

"Our business does not depend on collecting personal data. We have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers," it said.

"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."

A caveat is in place, and Apple like so many others, says that it is petitioning the government for the right to talk about national security orders. These are lacking from its report.

"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," it added.

Apple will only release information when presented with a court order it said, and most of the time it is asked to provide information about devices that have gone missing and are of interest to the police for that reason.

Just "a small fraction" of the requests that come its way refer to an iTunes, iCloud, or Game Center account. Apple calls these Account requests.

Apple is only allowed to reveal certain information about requests in the US, and can only release figures in increments of 1,000.

In the UK it dealt with 127 requests on 141 accounts. Apple provided information around a third of the time.

In the US the requests break the 1,000 mark, so are rounded off. There we see that Apple deals with between 1,000 and 2,000 requests on 2,000 to 3,000 accounts. Apple does not reveal how often it complied with these, explaining that in some cases it can't.

"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," it said in its notes.

Device requests, where the police are looking for errant hardware, is more of an exact science, and in the UK Apple got 1,028 requests and responded 67 percent of the time. In the US it got 3,542 requests on 8,605 devices and delivered information in 88 percent of the instances. µ

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