Big Tech Turns Over Personal Data to U.S. Law Enforcement in Skyrocketing Numbers
These days, it’s nearly impossible not to share personal information online.
Now, we’re learning that the U.S. law enforcement is increasingly asking for that data, and big tech companies are increasingly willing to hand it over.
Proton, a privacy focused email and cloud provider based in Switzerland, studied the numbers and found that major tech providers coughed up information on 3.1 million accounts to the federal government from late 2014 to early 2024.
That number does not include data requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which are largely kept secret.
Some of the biggest names in technology saw massive spikes in data turnover.
530% spike in accounts turned over at Google
675% spike at Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram
621% spike at Apple (fed by an outlier second half of 2022, when Apple shared over 300,000 accounts).
According to Proton, Apple, Google, and Meta comply with 80-90 percent of data requests.
“All that’s required for the government to find out just about everything it could ever need is a request message to Big Tech in California,” said Proton COO Raphael Auphan. “And as long as Big Tech refuses to implement widespread end-to-end encryption, these massive, private data reserves will remain open to abuse.”
Meanwhile Proton says FISA content requests to Meta have increased 2,171%, while those to Google have risen 594%. Apple, though less transparent with its records, reported a 274% increase in such requests between 2018 and 2023. FISA allows U.S. officials to request data for national security purposes with little oversight.
EU Requests Also Rising
While the U.S. is far and away the leaders, European governments are increasingly asking for more information too. EU member countries requested data on an estimated 164,000 user accounts in the first half of 2024, up 1,377% from the second half of 2014.
In 2024, Germany had the most requests in the EU, followed by France and Poland.
Supporters note that such requests are “simply standard police work in the 21st century” and that most data requests require a subpoena and that “Big Tech companies can and do fight overly broad or unjustified requests when they can.”
However, Proton notes that “even if you say that the 500,000 data requests made by the US government all followed due process, there are still hundreds of thousands of requests that were never reviewed by a judge that companies cannot fight at all.”
Privacy Fallout
Meanwhile, some privacy advocates are concerned about the fallout. In one example, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accessed vast amounts of data from sanctuary cities including license plates. Such data could be used to speed up arrests of illegal migrants.
And the push for online privacy is much more broad than just this one issue.
For instance, First Lady Melania Trump recently urged Congress to support a bill that would ban so-called “revenge porn” online.
The Take it Down Act would make it a crime to post "intimate images" - real or AI-generated - online without an individual's consent. It would also require technology companies to remove the content within 48 hours.
The bill passed the Senate but is pending in the House.