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Apple Reports 400 Percent Rise In National Security Requests (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Apple received a record number of national security orders this year, according to its bi-annual report published this week. The company stated it received more than 13,250 national security requests affecting over 9,000 accounts in the first half of 2017. Compared to the same period in 2015, this represents a threefold increase. National Security Requests are subpoenas by the government which oblige companies or individuals to share their data for national security purposes. The requests are usually made in the form of National Security Letters and are demanded only when it's indispensable to an investigation. The reason for this rise in numbers is still unclear. The company also revealed it provided data in 44 non-civil governmental cases, information which hadn't been revealed in its previous reports.
George W. Bush and Obama were people who at least cared a tiny, tiny amount about civil liberties even as they established precedents which were easily abused. And now, we're seeing what happens when one has people in charge (Trump and Sessions) who don't even bother pretending that they care about civil liberties.
[...] National Security Letters [...] are demanded only when it's indispensable to an investigation.
This is demonstratively untrue, as has become clear even through the usually attached gag orders on the NSLs: An NSL is simply more convenient to issue, carries a lower burden of proof on the requester, and neatly shuts up the requestee. Oh, and NSLs aren't "requests" as there's basically no way to decline. But hey, at least they're overseen by a court, right? By a secret court, in secret, following secret rules. Such "requests".
These things are highly corrosive to due process and that thing so elusive you don't even have a word for it, but the Germans and Dutch call "rechtsstaat". Go look it up. It means that NSLs prove the government entirely untrustworthy.
Yes, if Mr. Orange would want to really MAGA, he could do worse than just forbid NSLs entirely.
Why are they comparing 2017 to 2015? Did anyone else notice they skipped 2016?
I guess someone read the how to lie with statistics book.
Which is it?
Yeah ... It is a real mystery why there is a sudden spike in fascism in the US. Make Americans Grip Ankles! #MAGA
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Apple gadgets don't throw off user data to Apple ecosystem beyond the meta, storefronts, and iCloud. I wonder if the increase in NSL's going Apple's way is for iCloud stuff, and the increase reflects Apple's organically increasing cloud-user base instead of newfound zealotry on part of DoJ. Other companies - especially Google's - numbers on this front will be that much more interesting.
Excuse me, but a "threefold increase" as quoted in the summary does not equal a "400 percent rise" as mentioned in the headline.
Who writes these headlines and where did they learn to do arithmetic?? For the record, a threefold increase equals a 200% rise. Maybe this evident innumeracy is somehow connected with the apparent rise in fascism mentioned by another reader.