CUPERTINO -- Apple (AAPL) has joined Facebook and other leading Internet companies in reporting how many requests for customer information it receives from police and intelligence agencies, but critics complained Monday that the reports still don't give a clear picture of the government's data-gathering.

Silicon Valley's biggest Internet firms have all said they want to provide more information about government data requests, in part to counter recent news reports that suggested U.S. intelligence agencies have broad access to Internet users' information. But faced with restrictions from the government on what can be released, each company has taken a somewhat different tack.

Apple, for example, went beyond other companies in specifying that it doesn't give the government information relating to some specific products -- such as Apple's iMessage and FaceTime chat services, because they are encrypted, or Apple Maps searches and Siri requests, because the company doesn't keep the data in a way that's linked to individual users.

Google (GOOG), which previously has been a leader in disclosing certain kinds of data requests, declined to issue a new report in recent days because it said the government's latest restrictions "would be a step back" from transparency.



As a result, while the disclosures from Apple, Facebook and Microsoft appear to indicate that government requests involve only a small number of the hundreds of millions of people who use each company's services, the reports leave many questions unanswered.

Apple, for example, posted a statement on its website Sunday night that said it received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests for customer data, involving between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices, from all government agencies during the six months that ended in May. The company did not distinguish between requests from national security agencies and those it received from local police who sought help with things like investigating a robbery or finding a missing child -- although Apple said the more mundane police inquiries were "the most common form of request."



Since the reports don't break out the number of requests by category, they're only somewhat helpful, said privacy advocates. "To lump all the requests together tells us something about government access, but to separate them would tell us something more worthwhile," said Jennifer Stisa Granick at the Stanford law school's Center for Internet and Society.



Following those news reports, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple negotiated permission to include FISA requests in their totals. Google, however, said it's still pushing for approval to report national security requests separately from more routine law enforcement matters.

Internet companies have strong motive to show consumers they are pushing back against the government's requests, since news reports about government surveillance threaten to undercut consumer trust that the companies depend on, said Christopher Soghoian at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Critics contend the companies' recent statements have been carefully worded to reassure consumers while leaving some details unsaid.

"Their denials went through several revisions as it become (sic) more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies," Edward Snowden, the former spy agency contractor whose disclosures sparked the controversy, said during a public Internet chat Monday.

Still, he added, "as a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we're finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception."
