What the NSA doesn’t have: iMessages and FaceTime chats
Since The Guardian began leaking top-secret National Security Agency (NSA) documents just 11 days ago, several tech companies responded to the revelations about the PRISM program. The likes of Google, Facebook, and Apple objected to the tone of the press coverage, saying that any suggestion they've ever given a government agency direct access to their servers is false.
Over the weekend, tech companies started responding with additional transparency too. Facebook and Microsoft revealed ranges of how many government information requests they're getting about how many accounts.
Late Sunday, Apple jumped on the transparency bandwagon. The company published a blog post stating that in the past six months, it has received between 4,000 and 5,000 US law enforcement requests for information regarding 9,000 to 10,000 accounts. "The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide," notes the company.
