Apple Reports 400 Percent Rise In National Security Requests (thenextweb.com) 44
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Apple received a record number of national security orders this year, according to its bi-annual report published this week. The company stated it received more than 13,250 national security requests affecting over 9,000 accounts in the first half of 2017. Compared to the same period in 2015, this represents a threefold increase. National Security Requests are subpoenas by the government which oblige companies or individuals to share their data for national security purposes. The requests are usually made in the form of National Security Letters and are demanded only when it's indispensable to an investigation. The reason for this rise in numbers is still unclear. The company also revealed it provided data in 44 non-civil governmental cases, information which hadn't been revealed in its previous reports.
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Re: Donald Trump is a joke (Score:2)
The reason for increase should be clear (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: The reason for increase should be clear (Score:2)
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Is that your claim?
Do you want to buy some land in the everglades?
Re: The reason for increase should be clear (Score:1)
When you say "KILL ALL NAZI FAGGOTS", are you using faggots as a generic term of abuse or are you referring specifically to homosexual men? If it's the latter then does this mean you don't want to kill non-gay Nazis and if so what's the correct punishment for them? Should they be slapped around a bit or let off with a stiff arm?
In either case, I'm surprised at your language. You should know that faggot as a term of abuse is frowned upon by most people on the left and killing Nazis based on their sexualit
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Way to drain the swamp (Score:2, Troll)
Sounds like somebody's enjoying being in charge of the Deep State. Who could have guessed?
Re: Way to drain the swamp (Score:1)
Quite a lot of the increase this year came from the investigations into people connected with Trump.
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Sounds like somebody's enjoying being in charge of the Deep State. Who could have guessed?
Sounds more like somebody linked to an article that references this article [siliconbeat.com], but screwed up the numbers.
In its biannual transparency report, released on Thursday, Apple said it received between 13,250 and 13,499 national security orders, affecting between 9,000 and 9,249 accounts. In the first months of 2016, the company received less than a quarter of that: 2,750 to 2,999 orders affecting between 2,000 to 2,249 accounts.
Note that TFA from the submission managed to get the fucking timeframe wrong in addition to adding that "threefold" bullshit. All while hoping you don't actually check the original Apple report or the article they link to at the end they so expertly fucked up.
Misleading article is misleading (Score:2, Informative)
[...] National Security Letters [...] are demanded only when it's indispensable to an investigation.
This is demonstratively untrue, as has become clear even through the usually attached gag orders on the NSLs: An NSL is simply more convenient to issue, carries a lower burden of proof on the requester, and neatly shuts up the requestee. Oh, and NSLs aren't "requests" as there's basically no way to decline. But hey, at least they're overseen by a court, right? By a secret court, in secret, following secret rules. Such "requests".
These things are highly corrosive to due process and that thing so elusive you
Why compare 2017 to 2015? (Score:3)
Why are they comparing 2017 to 2015? Did anyone else notice they skipped 2016?
I guess someone read the how to lie with statistics book.
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Why are they comparing 2017 to 2015? Did anyone else notice they skipped 2016?
I guess someone read the how to lie with statistics book.
Why should we believe what Apple is reporting . . . ? Maybe the true number is 4,000 % . . . would Apple tell us the truth, if the government did not want us to know . . . ?
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Why should we believe what Apple is reporting . . . ? Maybe the true number is 4,000 % . . . would Apple tell us the truth, if the government did not want us to know . . . ?
Why wouldn't they? The government specifically set the rules so that companies like Apple are only allowed to report a range of 250. The assumption was obviously that Apple for example would report "1 to 250 requests" and the public would be left to guess. Now they are allowed to report "13,001 to 13,250", so that's what they do.
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Why wouldn't they?
Maybe . . . because they lie like rugs on a host of other things . . . ?
Three-fold or 400% increase? (Score:2)
Which is it?
Mining the ecosystem (Score:1)
Where is Sherlock Holmes! (Score:2)
Worth wondering... (Score:2)
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Most people are expected to have no working bank accounts (frozen assets), no access to more lawyers and no access to expert witnesses.
The NSL helps when a rare person can still fund a working defence. Their real experts can afford archaic legal terms like discovery.
A NSL just ensures nobody ever has to help in any way with later questions.
Methods stay secret and lawyers can keep asking all they want.
"400 Percent Rise"? (Score:3)
Who writes these headlines and where did they learn to do arithmetic?? For the record, a threefold increase equals a 200% rise. Maybe this evident innumeracy is somehow connected with the apparent rise in fascism mentioned by another reader.
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My name isn't Trump but I would call this fake news.
Re: "400 Percent Rise"? (Score:2)
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For the record, a threefold increase equals a 200% rise.
English is stupid anyway. If I fold something three times, then I've folded it into eight parts. Unless I tri-fold it, in which case it's in three parts, as you say. But wait, we're talking about sheep folds, which neither fold, nor are they a place where you fold sheep. What a goddamned train wreck.
Re: "an investigation" (Score:2)
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Please move the above comment to the article for which it was intended. (I expect it was the item about Equifax, several items up the page.)
The correct numbers (Score:1)
A look at the original reports [apple.com] reveals that actually both the "threefold" and the "by 400%" claims are completely wrong.
The number ranges (apparently there are regulations banning Apple from giving specific numbers) for the requests are: 750-999 for 1H2015, 2750-2999 for 1H2016, 13250-13499 for 1H2017. Taking the mean to represent each band, we can see that from 2015 to 2017 the number of requests actually increased 15.3 times (or by 1430 percent if you like that notation). The increase from 2015 to 2016 wa