Law enforcement agencies have gotten fairly addicted to requesting data from tech companies over the past decade. Using information from tech companies has become one of cops’ favourite investigative techniques the world over.
Surfshark, a prominent VPN provider, recently put together a report that shows which countries’ governments request the most data from several of the tech industry’s biggest firms — specifically, Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. When it comes to which countries come out on top, Surfshark isn’t categorising “biggest” data-sharers according to which governments made the most requests — otherwise the winner would obviously be China. Also, Google and Meta largely don’t operate in China. Instead, its metrics are based on the number of accounts that governments requested data on relative to the nation’s overall population. Thus, the countries that are listed as the biggest data-requesters are the ones that have requested the most data per 100,000 people. Here’s what the report’s findings reveal.
8. Belgium
Belgium is a small country but it shares a very large amount data with cops. Surfshark’s report says that, during the time period reviewed, companies received data requests from the government relating to some 36,683 user accounts. That works out to being some 316.72 requests per 100k people.
7. Portugal
During the relevant time period, Portugal received data requests from the government related to some 36,958 user accounts. That amounts to 358.89 requests per 100k people.
6. Ireland
Companies in Ireland received data requests related to 19,648 accounts, amounting to a rate of 395.56 requests per 100k people. Nice!
5. France
Companies received data requests from the French government related to 343,362 accounts, which amounts to 532.32 requests per 100k people.
4. The United Kingdom
Jolly ol’ Britain. Companies received data requests from the United Kingdom related to 391,835 accounts, which amounts to 583.37 requests per 100k people.
3. Singapore
Singapore, while a relatively small nation, is near the top of the list. During the aforementioned time period, the companies in question received data requests from the Singaporean government related to 35,980 accounts, which amounts to 607.13 requests per 100k people.
2. Germany
Deutschland did pretty well for itself on this list. During the aforementioned time period, the companies in question received data requests from the German government related to 540,562 accounts, which amounts to 648.23 requests per 100k people.
1. The United States
America is typically #1 in everything that it does (or that’s how we like to think of ourselves, at least) and police surveillance is no exception. During the time period reviewed, companies wracked up 2,451,077 data requests from the U.S. government. That’s sorts out to a whopping 728.41 requests per 100k people. Beautiful! We win!