Yahoo Releases Transparency Report on Government Agency Data Requests - The UpStream

Yahoo Releases Transparency Report on Government Agency Data Requests

posted Sunday Sep 8, 2013 by Nicholas DiMeo

Yahoo Releases Transparency Report on Government Agency Data Requests

Ever since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO of Yahoo, the company has had a complete turnaround. Yahoo is quickly becoming more relevant again and now owns an extremely large portfolio, and capped off the transition with a logo change. Now, Yahoo is becoming more transparent as well, and released some documents this week about the number of data requests received from government agencies around the world.

In this first global law enforcement transparency report, Yahoo shows information from January 1st to June 30th of this year. In the Tumblr blog post, Yahoo explains what the report actually is, from Ron Bell, general counsel of Yahoo.

Each country report shows how we processed the government data requests we received during this period. We include national security requests within the scope of our aggregate statistics. You will also see the number of accounts specified in these government data requests, which comprised less than one one-hundredth of one percent (<.01%) of our worldwide user base.

Yahoo also said in the post that this report is an all-encompassing government agency document, meaning anything from criminal law enforcement agencies to National Security Letters are included and added up. With this information, it does not come as a shocker that the US tops the list of requests to Yahoo. In six months, US officials have asked 12,444 times for information on 40,322 accounts. In those requests, Yahoo has provided information on 37 percent of the cases, and in just over half of those, only provided non-content data, which is any basic subscriber information like alternate email address, name, location, IP address, login details, billing information and the like.

Second on the list was Germany, who made 4,295 requests for a total of 5,306 accounts. Yahoo said that they only track requests when a country hits nine total requests, which places New Zealand at the bottom of the list for 9 accounts, and five of them were disclosed to the country. Yahoo also said that because of its acquisition of Tumblr, that the company will record Tumblr account requests into a separate bi-yearly report. Yahoo also pointed out that they continue to fight against unlawful or improper requests for data.

The entire report is interesting to look at, and is a fairly short read. It really puts into perspective how many times US agencies ask for information in comparison to the rest of the world, for just one company.

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