Yahoo! has said it received between 12,000 and 13,000 requests from the the US government’s National Security Agency (NSA) in the past six months.
A statement from Yahoo! chief executive officer (CEO) Marissa Mayer and general counsel Ron Bell said most of the requests the company received were concerned with fraud, homicides, kidnappings and other criminal allegations although requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) also featured.
Yahoo! said it cannot officially release requests under FISA since they are classified and is now urging the US government to allow the disclosure of such requests.
“Like all companies, Yahoo! cannot lawfully break out FISA request numbers at this time because those numbers are classified; however, we strongly urge the federal government to reconsider its stance on this issue,” read the statement.
The web giant said the US government should be accountable on its demands, with Yahoo! promising to release its first global law enforcement transparency report covering the first half of the year and will continue to do so biannually.
“Recognizing the important role that Yahoo! can play in ensuring accountability, we will issue later this summer our first global law enforcement transparency report, which will cover the first half of the year. We will refresh this report with current statistics twice a year.”
This new numbers are much higher than those already released by Facebook, which said it had received between 9,000 to 10,000 requests for data while Microsoft placed the number at between 6,000 and 7,000 requests.
Google and Twitter have yet to release such data although the two have hit out at their rivals for disclosing information without proper classification on the nature of requests.
