In its latest report on government and private party requests for customer information, Apple said it received 16,000-16,249 national security requests from the US government in the second half of the year. About 8,000-8,249 accounts were affected. The figures compare to 13,250-13499 national security requests from the US in the first half of the year, with 9,000-9,249 accounts affected. The year before, Apple had only received 5750-5999 requests, with 4750-4999 accounts affected.
China made 175,280 device requests, South Korean made 69,329, and Germany made 21,613. By region, Asia Pacific made 254,302 requests, EMEA made 38,272 and North America made 15,192.
In China, the most number of device requests were around tax/device export, device repair/warranty fraud and stolen device investigations. In South Korea, they were mainly about stolen device investigations. In Germany, the high volume of device requests were mainly due to the high incidences of reporting/investigation cases of stolen devices. In the US, requests were mainly linked to device repair fraud, fraudulent purchase and stolen device investigations.
The company added that it will start to report on government requests to take down apps from the App Store starting in its Transparency Report for the H2 2018.
