Snapchat Releases Report Showing How Many Times the Government Asked for User Data
VENICE, Calif., April 5 (UPI) — Snapchat has released a report showing how often the government asked for user data.
The report covers requests from Nov. 1, 2014 to Feb. 28, 2015. Over that time, it is said authorities asked for information on Snapchat users 403 times. Of that total, 375 requests were from the U.S. government and 28 were from foreign governments. The United Kingdom requested data the second most.
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It shows 172 of the requests related to search warrants and 159 were subpoenas. The new report does not show NSA requests, which will likely be featured in the following report. A fuller version of the report will be released when the company has six months of information to share. Snapchat complied with requests 92 percent of the time, which is higher than similar companies. Companies like Google and Facebook only comply around 80 percent of the time.
Government agencies handling intelligence have previously expressed concern with Snapchat and some similar services, since the messages sent with them are encrypted, which makes the messages difficult to intercept.
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