Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve covered various transparency reports before, but now the whole notion takes on a different feel in our post-PRISM world. Microsoft’s latest report details that it received 37,196 requests from law enforcement agencies between this January and June, which impacted 66,539 of its accounts. Seventy-seven percent of those requests were for data like a user’s name, IP history and billing address, and with 21 percent of requests, no data was disclosed at all. However, in 2.19 percent of queries by law enforcement, Redmond disclosed “at least some” customer content. What does that mean? Well, the company’s definition includes the subject or body of an email, photos stored in SkyDrive and address book info. According to the document, the info was all obtained via lawful warrants and court orders.

While National Security Letters also fall under the guise of law enforcement requests — which primarily come from the FBI in order to obtain records such as phone numbers and email addresses — Microsoft is only allowed to publish these statistics on an annual basis. Hence, they’re absent this time around, and will be published in the company’s next Law Enforcement Requests Report. To see just how deep the rabbit hole goes, do check out the source. We suggest putting on a pot of coffee, though — it’s not a quick read.

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Microsoft

Following in the footsteps of Facebook — which revealed its first Global Government Requests Report just a few weeks ago — Yahoo is finishing out the week by publishing data of its own. The firm’s first “global law enforcement transparency report” covers governmental requests for user data from January 1st through June 30th of this year, and the outfit plans to put out subsequent reports every six months. Of note, Yahoo claims that it’s including “national security requests within the scope of [its] aggregate statistics,” and for the paranoid in attendance, you may be relieved to know that said requests comprise “less than one one-hundredth of one percent (<.01%)” of Yahoo’s global userbase. Feel free to dig in at the links below, but sadly, you won’t find anything other than high-level macro figures. (As an aside, that logo.)

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Via: Tumblr (Yahoo)

Source: Yahoo Transparency Report

Governments are getting nosier than ever, at least if you ask Google. The search firm has already noticed rapidly mounting censorship in recent months, but its latest half-year Transparency Report has revealed a 26 percent surge in takedown requests toward the end of 2012 — at 2,285 total, more than twice as many as in 2009. Much of the jump can be attributed to Brazil, whose municipal election triggered a rush of anti-defamation requests from candidates, as well as a Russian blacklisting law that allows for trial-free website takedowns.

Whether or not the heat dies down in 2013, we’ll have a better sense of just what happens when a YouTube request comes down the pipe. From now on, Google will say whether government-based demands to remove videos were based on YouTube’s Community Guidelines or were directly linked to regional laws. Google isn’t any more inclined to comply with such requests — it argues those Brazilian clips are free speech, for example — but we’ll have a better sense of just how easy it is for the company to say no.

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Via: Google Official Blog

Source: Google Transparency Report

Google’s Transparency Report has sometimes supplied an unsettling level of detail as to what companies and governments want to know. Americans won’t feel much more comfortable now that Google has added the FBI’s National Security Letters to the mix. The investigative branch wants the numbers vague for secrecy’s sake, but curious residents at least have access to annual data that shows the range of requests for information and roughly how many users were affected — in this case, about 1,000 to 2,000 Google account holders every year since 2009. Google is quick to note that it does what it can to narrow the scope of requests and require search warrants for anything private. We’re slightly reassured by that extra line of defense, although the Transparency Report’s addition is still a reminder that the government is watching some of us.

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Via: Google Official Blog

Source: Google Transparency Report

When Google receives government requests for personal data, does it spit in the G-Man’s face or invite him in for tea and crumpets? The search giant’s transparency report reveals that, 88 percent of the time, the US will be able to rifle through your emails while eating baked goods. The States tops the chart, demanding Mountain View release information on 14,791 users in the last three months — with 3,152 requested with a search warrant, 10,390 with a subpoena and 1,249 from processes including EDPA court orders. The list of the top five nosiest countries is rounded out by India, France, Germany and the UK. Tour the report and you may notice that, breaking with tradition, content takedowns are no longer mentioned — Google is planning to break out that data as a separate filing in the future.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Google, (2)