(Image: file photo)
Apple's[1] latest transparency report is out.
New figures in the company's second biannual transparency report[2] for 2017 show that Apple received 29,718 demands to access 309,362 devices in the second-half of the year.
Data was turned over in 79 percent of cases.
The number of demands are down slightly on the first half of the year, but the number devices that the government wanted access to rocketed.
Read also: I asked Apple for all my data. Here's what was sent back[3]
In the US, the company said 90 percent of those device requests were subpoenas -- which don't require a court's approval, and only 6 percent were search warrants,[4] which require a judge to sign off.
The company said the high number of devices specified in US requests was largely due to device repair fraud investigations and investigations into stolen devices and fraudulent purchases.
Apple[5] also received 3,358 requests for data on 10,786 accounts, such as iCloud content[6], stored photos, email, contacts, and device backups. Although the number of requests are up, the number of accounts affected dropped compared to the first half of the year.
Data was provided in 82 percent of cases.
The company was also requested to preserve account data for up to three months in 1,214 cases, affecting 2,547 accounts, while law enforcement obtained the right legal process to access the data.
Apple also said that it didn't delete any accounts when requested -- though seven accounts were restricted.
The company also said it received between 16,000 and 16,249 national security orders, including secret rulings from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court[7].
Between 8,000 and 8,249 accounts