Feds Asked Yahoo for Your Information 12,444 in the last Six Months

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by MARK MEMMOTT

 

Adding its experience to those of other major browsers and social media sites, Yahoo said Friday that it received 29,470 requests from governments around the world for user data in the first six months of 2013.

Of that total, 12,744 — 42 percent — came from the U.S. government, Yahoo says.

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In its "transparency report," Yahoo adds that it:

"[h]as joined no program to volunteer user data to governments. Our legal department demands that government data requests be made through lawful means and for lawful purposes. We regularly push back against improper requests for user data, including fighting requests that are unclear, improper, overbroad or unlawful. In addition, we mounted a two-year legal challenge to the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and recently won a motion requiring the U.S. Government to consider further declassifying court documents from that case."

It also says "we have not included the statistics associated with Yahoo entities that received fewer than nine government data requests during the reporting period. For this report, that includes Yahoo! Colombia and Yahoo! Hispanic Americas. We have also not included statistics for Yahoo! Japan, which is a joint venture operating independently from Yahoo! Inc., in which Yahoo! Inc. has a minority ownership interest."

Here are Yahoo's results, ranked from most-to-least:

United States, 12,444
Germany, 4,295
Italy, 2,637
Taiwan, 1,942
France, 1,855
United Kingdom, 1,709
India, 1,490
Hong Kong, 839
Spain, 718
Australia, 704
Brazil, 308
Argentina, 186
Mexico, 150
Singapore, 138
Canada, 29
Ireland, 17 
New Zealand, 9

And alphabetically:

Argentina, 186
Australia, 704
Brazil, 308
Canada, 29
France, 1,855
Germany, 4,295
Hong Kong, 839
India, 1,490
Ireland, 17
Italy, 2,637
Mexico, 150
New Zealand, 9
Singapore, 138
Spain, 718
Taiwan, 1,942
United Kingdom, 1,709
United States, 12,444