Apple joins Facebook and Microsoft in revealing US surveillance requests

The technology firm Apple says it has received 4,000-5,000 surveillance requests from the US government about its customers since December 2012.

The company's disclosure comes after the Guardian revealed the existence of a US National Security Agency programme called Prism to tap into data held by Apple, Google, Facebook and other tech companies.

Apple's move comes after Facebook and Microsoft revealed on Friday the numbers of requests they had received.

A statement released on the company's website on Monday read: "From December 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013, Apple received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from US law enforcement for customer data.

"Between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices were specified in those requests, which came from federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters."

Apple goes on to say that the most common requests come from police investigating crimes, searching for missing children, locating patients with Alzheimer's disease or trying to prevent someone killing themself.

Apple stressed that each request was evaluated on its merits and not automatically granted.

"Regardless of the circumstances, our legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities," the statement said. "In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it."

The company said certain kinds of customer data were never handed over, because it chose not to store them.

"For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers' location, map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form."

On Friday, Facebook became the first company to release similar aggregate numbers of surveillance requests, claiming it received 9,000-10,000 US requests for user data in the second half of 2012, covering 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts.

Microsoft followed suit with its own disclosure of requests for the second half of 2012, during which it received 6,000-7,000 criminal and national security requests affecting 31,000-32,000 consumer accounts.

Apple's announcement reiterated the company's previous claim that it had never heard of the National Security Agency's Prism programme before being asked about it by journalists on 6 June.

"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," the statement said.

Guardian