Microsoft: US government data demands doubled in six months

Boom in in the number of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act data requests, claims Microsoft

Microsoft received more than double the number of user data demands from US government police and intelligence agencies in the first half of 2016 compared to the previous six months.

The software giant revealed the user-data requests in its latest bi-annual transparency report.

Microsoft reports that it received 'between 0 and 499' Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests from the US government in the second half of 2015, but this number more than doubled in the first half of 2016, with the company receiving 'between 1,000 and 1,499' FISA requests between January and June 2016.

According to Microsoft, this is the highest number of data requests it has received since 2011, when it began tracking government surveillance orders.

However, the number of users that the FISA orders related to fell during the same period - from between 17,500 and 17,999 in the last six months of 2015, to between 12,000 and 12,499 in the first six months of 2016.

Meanwhile, Microsoft also released its law enforcement requests report, in which it revealed that during the second half of 2016 it received a total of 25,837 legal requests for customer information from law enforcement agencies, bringing the total up to 61,409. This is a decrease from 2015 when requests totalled 74,311.

Microsoft said that the majority of the law enforcement demands it received during this period continued to come from a handful of countries: the US, the UK, France and Germany.

For the first time, the Redmond-based software giant also published a national security letter (NSL), a warrantless surveillance order used by the FBI.

In the letter, dated back to 2014, the unnamed FBI worker asks for all subscriber information, limited to name, address, and length of service, for all services provided to or accounts held by the named subscriber.

The worker adds that the information sought "is relevant to an authorised investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities".

Steve Lippman, director of corporate responsibility at Microsoft, said that the company was able to disclose the content for the first time in this reporting period thanks to reforms introduced with the USA Freedom Act.

However, he added that the company believes that "reasonable limits on the routine use of government secrecy should be adopted more broadly.

"There are times when secrecy is vital to an investigation, but too often secrecy orders are unnecessarily used, or are needlessly indefinite and prevent us from telling customers of intrusions even after investigations are long over.

"That's why we asked a federal court to weigh in on the increasing frequency of these orders. Our hope is this lawsuit will lead to new rules or laws that keep secrecy for times when it is truly essential," he said.

Microsoft filed suit in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington back in April 2016. In the lawsuit, Microsoft said that it believed the current Electronic Communications Privacy Act had a section that violates two major elements of the US constitution.

The section relates to not having to tell a consumer that the US government has accessed a person's communications, which Microsoft believes violates the Fourth Amendment. This gives people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property.

The company argued that it also violates the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. Microsoft claims the Act violates its freedom to talk to customers about how government actions are affecting their data.

Back in 2013, Microsoft and Google sued the US government in a bid to win the right to reveal more information about official requests for user data.