"Apple has announced that it received fewer than 250 requests for data from US"
:P
Apple has announced that it received less than 250 requests for data from US intelligence agencies in the first half of last year after the Obama administration slightly loosened restrictions on disclosing spooks' data requests. After months of negotiations between the Obama administration and tech firms, from Yahoo! to …
It's like the UK restricting laws to specific high risk terrorist targets and then having the Met classify all of London as a potential target for an indefinite period.
...or pretending that what the spy agencies are doing is monitored by government by requiring a warrant from the foreign secretary each time they use their powers, then allowing the foreign secretary issue a blanket warrant for everything they do.
Oh, wait... they already do that don't they?
"The number of accounts involved in national security orders is infinitesimal relative to the hundreds of millions of accounts registered with Apple," the firm said.
It is easy to be blasé when it's not your confidential info being handed out without your permission. Betcha if a national security order demanded communications containing the designs for the iPhone 6, suddenly these orders would become an violation of all that is good and virtuous.
It is easy to be blasé when it's not your confidential info being handed out without your permission.
But is that the case? How many Apple employees use Apple's services? The odds are just as high* that a random Apple employee using an Apple service has been the target of one of these orders as a random non-employee who uses Apple services.
* Absent further demographic information anyway. Apple's hiring requirements, for example, may have some effect on the odds, but when the odds are already on the order of one in a million, I bet it's not significant.
Ah but the first request was for a copy of everything on their servers.
All other requests were for the same thing at different times of the day plus news on the new iPhone 5s before release etc
Yeh what Apple have said is not very helpful unless you know the scope of the request.