US government requests for user data from technology companies has skyrocketed by 770% in the past decade, a new research report has concluded.
In total, information from more than 3.5 million accounts has been shared with the federal government, reflecting routine government requests reported under standard transparency disclosures, according to the latest research from digital privacy company Proton. That figure surges to 6.7 million accounts when including Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests, the researchers found.
Proton, which based its research on public transparency reports from Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Meta Platforms Inc, found that the US government steadily increased requests over the last decade. The number of disclosed accounts jumped by 927% at Apple, 557% at Google and 668% at Meta during that time period. Contents included emails, files and contacts, according to Proton.
The surge has been bipartisan, increasing regardless of which political party was in office, the research shows.
"This isn’t a blue or red thing – this isn’t a sort of Trump or Biden or Obama thing. It has gone up consistently for over a decade now,” said Edward Shone, Proton’s head of communications. "This is a government oversight point.”
Asked for comment, a White House spokesperson said, "The Trump administration continues to champion the right to privacy for Americans and American data by encouraging secure technologies and supply chains that protect user privacy from design to deployment.”
A Google spokesperson said the company’s policy is to review each government request for user data to ensure it satisfies applicable laws before complying.
"We safeguard our users with industry-leading encryption by default and offer advanced client-side encryption for organisations with strict data sovereignty needs,” the spokesperson said. "When governments request information, we review every demand and regularly push back on those that are overly broad.”
Meta said that while requests from the government have increased over the years, the number of requests fulfilled by Meta has remained consistent.
"Each and every request we receive is carefully reviewed for legal sufficiency, and we may reject or require greater specificity on requests that appear overly broad or vague,” Meta previously said.
Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The federal government has historically asked for data on individuals in the name of criminal investigations or national security. According to Congress, law enforcement may legally obtain warrants or subpoenas for data stored in the cloud or on a device. The FISA legislation, enacted in 1978, establishes procedures for physical and electronic surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence. Section 702 of the act, which expires next month and is up for reauthorization, permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the US.
"It’s clear that the biggest tech companies are a frequent and growing target for government surveillance,” said US Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who has called for reforms to Section 702. "A handful of companies are collecting huge amounts of information about Americans’ lives, so it is natural that they are a tempting target for law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”
He added, "Unless Congress passes strong new guardrails to protect Americans’ rights, that information will inevitably be abused.”
Tom Bowman, who serves as a policy counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said he worries the federal government is tapping into Big Tech’s trove of user data to censor and repress political dissidents. In addition, he said the trove collected by the government raises questions about why end-to-end encryption isn’t the default for tech giants to properly protect sensitive user data.
End-to-end encryption protects users’ data by ensuring secure communication so no third party can access the information. Apple, for instance, offers users optional end-to-end encryption through its advanced data protection feature that encrypts most of a user’s iCloud data.
"It’s really important to have those technological protections in place because the legal protections aren’t there,” said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Meta recently announced it was removing end-to-end encrypted messaging for Instagram’s chat feature, saying few people were opting in to use it. – Bloomberg
