The Government Really Can Hear You Now: Verizon Releases First Transparency Report

Verizon
wireless has released its first ever transparency report
revealing how many demands from law enforcement for information
about its customers the company received in 2013. in total: 321,545
such demands. How many such demands were warrants based on probable
cause? Just 36,696 of them. 

Under what circumstances does the company provide information
about the content of its customers’ communications, stored data and
locations?

Content. We are compelled to provide contents of
communications to law enforcement relatively
infrequently. Under the law, law enforcement may seek
communications or other content that a customer may store through
our services, such as text messages or email. Verizon only
releases such stored content to law enforcement with a warrant; we
do not produce stored content in response to a general order or
subpoena. Last year, we received approximately 14,500 warrants
for stored content. 

As explained above, law enforcement may also present a wiretap
order to obtain access to the content of a communication as it is
taking place, which they did about 1,500 times last
year. Taken together, the number of orders for stored content
and to wiretap content in real-time accounted for only about five
percent of the total number of demands we received in 2013.

Location Information.  Verizon only produces
location information in response to a warrant or order; we do not
produce location information in response to a subpoena. Last
year, we received about 35,000 demands for location
data: about 24,000 of those were through orders and about
11,000 through warrants. In addition, we received about 3,200
warrants or court orders for “cell tower dumps” last year. In
such instances, the warrant or court order compelled us to identify
the phone numbers of all phones that connected to a specific cell
tower during a given period of time. The number of warrants
and orders for location information are increasing each year.

Oddly, the Feds will not let the company tell us the exact
number of National Security Letters that it receives. NSLs cannot
be used to obtain information about the contents of communications,
but the FBI need not go to a court to issue an NSL.

We also received between 1,000 and 2,000 National Security
Letters in 2013. We are not permitted to disclose the exact number
of National Security Letters that were issued to us, but the
government will allow us to provide a broad range.

Apparently, knowing just how many NSLs the FBI issues will
empower enemies domestic and foreign.

It’s way past time to rein in government snooping by
reforming the Electronic Privacy Communications Act to apply
Fourth Amendment protections to our electronic communications and
data storage.