just as a point of comparison, google had 25,879 requests involving 42,500 accounts in approximately the same time period (january 1 through june 2013)
google complied with ~65% of the requests
("fun" tidbit: the number for the last half year are 304,915 requests for 748,478 accounts, and google complied with.... 98%!)
The question is, how much data NSA accesses in a single request. The official rules have changed but the "two hop" rule permits the agency to recover metadata from about 25,000 phones with a single request, according to 2016 Stanford study.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/nsa-can-legally-access-metadata-of...
In addidition to the official request NSA infiltrated links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-in...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6641378
> google had ... requests
Official requests.
>Official requests.
obviously.
i dont have access to the number of gag-order requests, and if i did, i wouldnt be posting them on hn
Google's privacy ain't main/one of main selling point since we all know how things work in ad business.
If apple was principally against sharing those things they wouldnt be joining the very organization made for that.
Plus any public statement from anybody, unless forced by court, shouldnt be taken as facts. We have no way of knowing if it was 25k cases or 25 million cases, and they have no reason to tell such non-public truth if its harmful to them.
my comment is primarily to give a sense of scale.
you don't know whether "4,000 to 5,000 requests" is a lot or a little if you have no point of comparison.
i am not commenting on the conclusions, everyone should have the opportunity to draw those themselves.