Apple has released statistics on requests from US law enforcement agencies regarding personal data of users of the corporation's services. Over the past six months, Apple has received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests.

"We asked the U.S. government for permission to release a number of requests. We have received permission to release some of that information," Reuters quotes Apple as saying in a statement. It says Apple received the requests between Dec. 1, 2012, and May 31, 2013. Most of them were from police in connection with robbery investigations, missing children and suicide attempts.

Apple noted that users' correspondence in the iMessage and FaceTim services is protected by subscriber encryption, meaning that only the participants in the correspondence have access to it. Last week, Facebook and Microsoft published similar statistics. Facebook reported that in the second half of 2012, it received requests from US intelligence agencies regarding data on about 19,000 accounts. Microsoft received between 6,000 and 7,000 requests in the last six months of 2012.

The companies decided to publish the statistics of requests against the backdrop of a scandal that erupted after the leak of information about a large-scale program to collect data on calls of millions of users and about the secret PRISM program, within the framework of which the special services gain access to the data of the world's largest IT companies. American Edward Snowden revealed to the Washington Post and the Guardian the existence of the PRISM program, which allows direct access to the central servers of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others. According to the newspapers, the special services extract audio, video, photographs, and email messages from the servers, which allow tracking the movements of people and their contacts. However, the companies themselves deny the information about providing US special services with direct access to the servers.

Apple Receives Up to 5,000 Requests for User Data from US Authorities