Verizon To Disclose Government Requests For Customer Data

Verizon is getting ready to release a detailed report twice a year in regards to the number of law enforcement requests they get for their customers data in the US and aboard. The first of these reports which will cover the whole of 2013 will be made available in early 2014, from then on Verizon will release a report twice a year about the number of requests it receives from the various branches of government agencies and law enforcement agencies.

Randdal S. Milch went on to shed more light on this mater;

“All companies are required to provide information to government agencies in certain circumstances. This new report is intended to provide more transparency about law enforcement requests. Although we have a legal obligation to provide customer information to law enforcement in response to lawful demands, we take seriously our duty to provide such information only when it is authorized by law. Verizon has been offering this information to the public for the last two years, however by releasing these reports yearly will we make this information more consistently and easily available”.

Verizon isn’t the only company to come out and state that they will make available all requests to the public, with tech companies Google, Twitter, Facebook and many others stating that they will release the total number of requests they get from government agencies about their end users.  In these reports will be the number of subpoenas, court orders and warranted requests the companies have received. All of this change started to happen after it was leaked that in June that the NSA had been saving records of millions of phone calls made in the US. All this change and information started when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden started leaking documents from the NSA and making their practices public.

Thank you CNET for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of rt.