Apple Electronics, the maker of smartphones for the iPhone and iPad, has unveiled an increase in the number of applications it received from governments around the world for data, Related to its users during the first half of this year.
The company released its semi-annual transparency report, which details government and private enterprise requests for information from its users for various purposes. With more than 1.3 billion Apple products being used around the world, governments´ desire for user data has increased in recent years, including the first half of last year.
According to the report, Apple received 32,342 applications from around the world, with 42% of these requests coming from Germany. Apple pointed out that the large increase in data requests in Germany was mainly related to investigations into theft of these devices. The United States came in second with 4,570 applications. Apple received 29,718 applications during the second half of last year.
"Apple" aims to simplify the process of publishing data request reports on its new website, "Transparency". In the past, Apple published a brief report containing a limited amount of data, including the number of devices for which data were requested in each country and the number of devices for which data were provided.
Apple has designed the transparency site to be interactive as it allows users to navigate between countries and time periods to see the number of applications submitted in any period or from any country, in the same way as Microsoft´s US software and electronics reports transparency.
Apple has been helping law enforcement agencies retrieve data from iPhone´s closed handsets. But its willingness to help these devices has changed over the past few years due to the large increase in the number of requests for assistance it receives, and the dispute with governments on the methods of spying security devices on users´ phones.
