Verizon: US government made 150,000 customer info requests in 2014
7/8/2014WASHINGTON — The U.S. government issued about 150,000 requests for customer information from Verizon Communications in the first half of 2014, most of them subpoenas, the country's largest wireless carrier reported on Tuesday.
The report is the second summary of government requests Verizon has publicly issued since shareholders pressured the company to divulge information it shared with the government in December.
The government issued 72,342 subpoenas, half of which request subscriber information on a given phone number or IP address, while others ask for transactional information, like the phone numbers a customer has called, according to Verizon.
Verizon also received over 37,000 court orders, including 714 wiretaps, which give access to the content of communications and over 3,000 pen registers and trap and trace orders, which give the government real-time access to outgoing and incoming phone numbers, respectively.
“We repeat our call for governments around the world to make public the number of demands they make for customer data from telecom and Internet companies,” Randal Milch, Verizon's general counsel, wrote in a company blog.
The report included limited information on international requests. France led all foreign countries listed in the report in customer information point requests, which include phone numbers or IP addresses used to identify a customer, with 762 requests. (Reporting by Marina Lopes; Editing by Jan Paschal)