Earlier on Monday, Apple Inc. published their bi-annual Transparency Report for the first half of this year on their website. In the report, they disclosed details about the number of requests they received from the Indian Government. From January through June 2018, Indian Government asked Apple to provide info regarding 27 devices and 18 accounts. And the Cupertino giant provided data in 63% (17 devices) and 78% (14 accounts) of the cases respectively.
The company received 34 Financial Identifier requests constituting of 3,199 identifiers out of which, the company provided details in 85% of the cases. The company also sanctioned access to data in all 3 of the emergency cases that came up during this period.
“One request may contain one or multiple identifiers. We count the number of identifiers identified in each request and report the total number of identifiers by type (Device, Financial Identifier, Account),”
Apple, Transparency Report (Jan – June 2018)
One of the major reasons for Apple providing customer data to the government was due to the iTunes gift card fraud investigation.
In total, the company received over 25,000 requests from governments across the globe and provided data in 79% of the cases. This is a 9% rise from last year’s semi-annual Transparency Report (July – Dec 2017).
Apple Inc.
“Apple is committed to your privacy and being transparent about government requests for customer data globally. “
The company earlier mentioned that they expect governments and private entities to follow applicable laws and statutes when requesting customer information and data. Apple’s legal team reviews requests received to ensure that the requests have a valid legal basis. And when they a receive request seeking their customers’ personal information, they notify the customer that they have received a request concerning their private data unless they are explicitly prohibited by the legal process to do so via a court order.
