Microsoft today released its updated biannual reports on their Transparency Hub website. According to its latest Content Removal Requests Report, Microsoft received 537 requests between July and December 2015 either to remove links to revenge porn photos or videos from Bing search results, or to remove access to the content itself when shared on OneDrive or Xbox Live.
Other highlights from the report,
- Microsoft received a total number of 39,083 legal requests for customer information from law enforcement agencies in the second half of 2015. This reflects an increase over the 35,228 requests received for the first half of 2015.
- Just over 2 percent of law enforcement requests resulted in the disclosure of content customers created, shared or stored on our services. Microsoft does not disclose customer content without a court order or warrant.
- The passage of the USA Freedom Act enabled us to report Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests and National Security Letters (NSLs) in narrower ranges of bands of 500 versus 1,000. For the latest FISA data reported, Microsoft received 0-499 FISA Orders seeking disclosure of content impacting 15,500-15,999 accounts, which compares with 0-999 FISA Orders seeking disclosure of content impacting 18,000-18,999 accounts reported for the previous period. We received 0-499 National Security Letters in the latest reporting period versus 0-999 in the previous period.
- Requests from law enforcement agencies in five countries – United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, France and Germany – represent 76.8 percent of total requests in the second half of 2015. This pattern is similar to the one we’ve seen since we began reporting this detail, with these countries representing the majority of requests.
- In addition to requests from law enforcement agencies, Microsoft receives legal demands for customer data from civil litigation parties around the world. Microsoft adheres to the same principles for all requests from civil proceeding legal requests as it does for government agencies requests for user data, requiring non-governmental civil litigants to follow the applicable laws, rules and procedures for requesting customer data. For the first time, we have provided data on civil litigation requests to accompany our Law Enforcement Requests Report.
Read more about it here.