Following reports that they have complied with a broad government spying program, technology companies have begun releasing more information about the national security-related requests for user information made by the federal government.
Facebook published a statement on its blog late Friday which gave a general idea of how many requests for information it received from the government in the second half of last year. Including national security letters, the total number of requests was between 9,000 and 10,000, relating to between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.
Later on Friday Microsoft posted a similar statement, saying 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 in the U.S. The company said it was forbidden from saying whether any of these were FISA orders, but if any were, they would be included in that total.
Both companies stressed that even the overall numbers of requests were tiny in comparison to their user bases. The number of national security-related requests likely make up a relatively small proportion of these requests. According to Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel: