Not one African government made a request to Apple for personal data of its users, according to the technology company’s latest Report on Government Information Requests.
HumanIPO reported in August African requests for Facebook data had been wholly ignored when South Africa made 14, Egypt made eight, the Ivory Coast made four, Botswana made three and Uganda one. In contrast the United States had 79 per cent of their 12,000 requests complied with by the social network.
In Apple’s first ever report of its kind, the United States are by far the most prolific again, making between 1,000 and 2,000 account requests – more than every other government combined.
Unlike the other 30 countries listed, Apple were unable to disclose the percentage of the US requests that were complied with, as well as the exact number of requests it received from the superpower’s authorities.
The company stated: “We strongly oppose this gag order, and Apple has made the case for relief from these restrictions in meetings and discussions with the White House, the US attorney general, congressional leaders and the courts.”
The United Kingdom had the second highest number of requests with 127 – of which 37 per cent were complied with – while the Spanish made 102 requests with a 22 per cent compliance rate from Apple.
Germany (93), Australia (74) and France (71) followed.
“We have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers,” Apple said, accompanying its publication.
“We protect personal conversations by providing end-to-end encryption over iMessage and FaceTime. We do not store location data, Maps searches, or Siri requests in any identifiable form.”
