Microsoft Releases Government Snooping Data

Requests from government and law enforcement agencies for data from Microsoft’s various services have been released by the company for the first six months of 2013. Currently requests are on track to either meet or exceed 2012 figures of just over 75,000, with the first six months of this year garnering more than 37,000 enquiries.

By Mike Wheeler

 

Requests from government and law enforcement agencies for data from Microsoft’s various services have been released by the company for the first six months of 2013.

 

Currently requests are on track to either meet or exceed 2012 figures of just over 75,000, with the first six months of this year garnering more than 37,000 enquiries.

 

Services affected by the requests include Hotmail, Skype, Outlook, Office 365 and Microsoft accounts. In 2.19 percent of cases Microsoft ended up handing over information from these accounts, with the vast majority of those being from the United States of America.

 

The top five countries asking for the information were the United States of America, Turkey, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. Australian figures were not issued.

 

There are no details on whether any criminal or civil arrests or prosecutions were made as a result of the information handed over to the agencies who requested it.

 

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