Apple received between 1,000 and 2,000 U.S. government...

include what percentage of the requests the company had complied with, but a concluding note mentioned Apple has never received a request under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the government’s bulk telephone metadata collection program and other types of records collection requests. “We would expect to challenge such an order if served on us,” the report said. Apple also received 3,542 requests for U.S. device information from law enforcement officials and has complied with 88 percent of those. But device requests mostly arise from lost or stolen iPhones, the release said, whereas account requests “generally involve account holders’ personal data and their use of an online service in which they have an expectation of privacy.” The company said in a statement it had disclosed all the information it was “legally allowed to share.” In meetings with government agencies, congressional leaders and “the courts,” the company has “made the case for relief from” the “gag order,” which forbids Apple from releasing, “except in broad ranges, the number of national security orders, the number of accounts affected by the orders, or whether content, such as emails, was disclosed,” the report said. “We believe that dialogue and advocacy are the most productive way to bring about a change in these policies, rather than filing a lawsuit against the U.S. government.” But the company did file an amicus brief at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in support of an ongoing petition from five large tech companies to disclose more information about the government requests they receive (http://bit.ly/178YSRb). Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Yahoo and Facebook have all joined the lawsuit (CD Oct 3 p5), which is in a holding pattern after a response deadline was pushed back indefinitely during the government shutdown (CD Oct 9 p18).