In March, Microsoft released its first Law Enforcement Requests Report in an effort to be more transparent about how its customer information is used by outside agencies. The first such report covered all of 2012, with Microsoft stating they received a total of 75,378 law enforcement requests.
Today, Microsoft issued its second such report, covering requests for the first half of 2013. The post claims that Microsoft received 37,196 requests from law enforcement agencies that could have impacted as many as 66,539 accounts for the first six months of this year. Microsoft says those requests cover less than 0.01 percent of all of its customer accounts.
Microsoft said that nearly 21 percent of the requests resulted in no information being given to law enforcement authorities. Microsoft did disclose what it called "non content information" for 77 percent of the law enforcement requests in the first half of this year. Actual content disclosures to law enforcement groups covered just 2.19 percent of the requests. The vast majority of those particular orders, 92 percent, were from the U.S.
In August, Microsoft said it would move forward with litigation against the U.S. government to have the right to offer detailed information to the public on any account requests that involve the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft