Apple has thrown its weight behind Silicon Valley’s legal challenge to restrictions that the US government places on reporting its requests for customer information, publishing new data about thousands of such demands from authorities around the world.
The disclosures by the world’s most valuable technology company follow fresh revelations about the extent of the US National Security Agency’s internet surveillance, which Google last week called “outrageous”.
At the same time as filing an amicus brief to a First Amendment case filed by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others earlier this year, Apple sought to distance its business model from internet firms which use customer data to sell advertising.