Verizon Gets Almost 139,000 Government Demands for Customer Data in First Half 2017

Verizon received nearly 139,000 subpoenas, orders, warrants and emergency requests, from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies for the first half of 2017, almost 3,000 more requests than the same period last year, said the telco's transparency report Monday. The company received 9,500 fewer demands in the last half of 2016, it said. Of the 2017 demands, more than 68,000 were subpoenas, more than 32,300 were orders and more than 28,300 general orders, more than 10,700 were warrants and nearly 27,500 emergency requests from law enforcement. The company said it rejected about 3 percent of all demands it received because they were legally invalid and may need a "different type of legal process" for the requested information. The report doesn't include statistics for AOL acquired in 2015, nor Yahoo, bought in June. Those companies, now called Oath, will issue a separate report, the telco said. The company said it also received between 0-499 national security letter demands for the first half of this year. General Counsel Craig Silliman blogged that the company will file a joint amicus brief with other tech companies in a Supreme Court case that will determine whether customers have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cellsite data conveyed to their providers. The high court said in June it will hear Carpenter v. U.S. (see 1706050006). Silliman urges Congress to pass updates to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (see 1707270043) and approve the International Communications Privacy Act (see 1708010053).