Latest Apple data shows a global drop in law enforcement info requests

Apple's latest Transparency Report, which provides data on how many government or private requests for data, app removals, or account preservations have been made, shows a worldwide decline in late 2020 versus the first half of the year.

The latest version of the report, which is updated twice a year, covers the period between July and December 2020. The new numbers suggest an overall decline in requests for data globally compared to the previous update.

In the six months between July and December 2020, for example, Apple received a total of 25,784 device requests for 83,307 devices. That's down from 28,276 device requests for 171,368 devices in the previous six-month period.

Account preservation requests, which are often made for possible law enforcement evaluation, climbed slightly. Apple received 4,000 requests for account preservation, up from 3,751. In total, the company received 7,751 requests throughout 2020.

In the U.S., Apple received 4,025 government device requests between July and December 2020, down slightly from 4,641 requests in the prior six months. Apple gave the government data in 3,790 of those 4,641 requests.

Germany remained the top data requester in the period, sending Apple 11,474 total device requests — the highest number by a large margin. The 4,025 U.S. requests came in second, while Brazil ranked third with 1,639 requests.

Emergency requests for user data, which is provided in circumstances involving imminent danger of death or physical injury, were up. Apple received 1,162 emergency requests in the latter half of 2020, up from 770.

The reason behind the drops aren't immediately clear.

6 Comments

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

About 3 years ago

"The reason behind the drops aren't immediately clear.”

It’s as clear as a bell to me. Governments are getting better at cracking iOS and don’t need to request data from Apple as much anymore.

viclauyyc 847 comments · 10 Years

Did apple tell how many requests from China and Russia?

rob53 3307 comments · 13 Years

lkrupp said:

"The reason behind the drops aren't immediately clear.”

It’s as clear as a bell to me. Governments are getting better at cracking iOS and don’t need to request data from Apple as much anymore.

It's easy with the hacking systems they already bought that a governmental group wants to treat as hacking systems. They don't need anymore of them to do what they need to do.

Apple needs to come up with a magic bullet that watches hacking attempts, captures what they're doing, and forwards it back to the Apple security group so they can buy their own hackers and hack the hackers.

Xed 2868 comments · 4 Years

lkrupp said:

"The reason behind the drops aren't immediately clear.”

It’s as clear as a bell to me. Governments are getting better at cracking iOS and don’t need to request data from Apple as much anymore.

That's a completely reasonable hypothesis (which was also my first assumption), but we don't have evidence to support that as being "clear as a bell" or in any way backed but fact.