EFF: Apple offers user data to the government without a court order and without your knowledge
This time we bring you a detailed investigation, recently carried out regarding the criteria taken into account to examine the policies of large Internet companies, through an annual report by the "Electronic Frontier Foundation".
When you use the internet, you entrust your conversations, thoughts, experiences, locations, photos, and much more data to companies like Google, AT&T, Facebook, etc. But what do these companies actually do with all that private information? Do they really protect your data? Well, here's a breakdown of how this massive amount of information is handled:
This annual report examines all email providers, iCloud storage providers, and related services.
The purpose of this report is to encourage companies to be transparent with their customers and to explain how user data flows to the government. For this purpose, we have compiled key elements of the report, which was created by evaluating each company's published terms, privacy policies, transparency reports, and guidelines for law enforcement requests. This year, we will award stars to companies that publicly commit to requiring a warrant when the government seeks user content.
For the 2013 report, the following six criteria were used to evaluate the company's practices and policies:
- Require an order of content for communications: In this new category, companies gain recognition if they assist the government in obtaining a warrant, supported by probable cause, before releasing the content of a user's communications. This policy ensures that private messages stored by online services like Facebook, Google, and Twitter are handled in compliance.
- Inform users about government data requests: To earn a star in this category, internet companies must promise to notify users when the government attempts to access their data, unless prohibited by law. This gives users the opportunity to defend their data against government overreach and lawsuits.
- Publish reports transparently: In this category, we award companies with one star if they publish statistics on how frequently they provide user data to the government.
- Publish law enforcement guidelines: Companies earn a star in this category if they make public policies or explain guidelines on how they respond to government data demands, such as law enforcement guidelines.
- Fight for users' privacy rights in court: To earn recognition in this category, companies must have a public record of resisting excessive government demands for access to user content in court.
- Fight for user privacy in Congress: Internet companies earn a star in this category if they support efforts to modernize electronic privacy laws and thus defend users in the digital age by joining the Digital Coalition through due process.
New companies in the 2013 Report
The companies included in last year's report:
- Amazon.
- Apple.
- AT&T.
- Comcast.
- Dropbox.
- Facebook.
- Foursquare.
- Google.
- LinkedIn.
- Loopt.
- Microsoft.
- MySpace.
- Skype or Whatsapp
- Sonic.net.
- ODIN.
- Twitter.
- Verizon.
- Yahoo!
New companies are being added to this year's report, such as:
- Tumblr,
- WordPress (Automattic, Inc.).
The companies removed from this year's report are:
- Loopt.
- Skype (combined with Microsoft).
This year, two companies, Twitter and Sonic.net, received a total of six stars, while Verizon and MySpace didn't earn any. Apple and AT&T each received one star for their participation in the Digital Due Process Coalition, but otherwise do very little to protect privacy.
The most relevant aspect of this report, and a topic of paramount importance to all Apple users, according to the EFF, is how Apple offers user data to the government without any authorization from the users themselves. Furthermore, the company fails to inform its users about government data requests, publish transparency reports, publish the law's guidelines for enforcement, and fight for users' privacy rights in court.
All this material is publicly available through these reports, which simply reveal how companies apply legal regulations regarding user data. Their sole objective is to encourage companies to inform users about how their data is handled.
Check out the full report at the following link: 2013 Report
