In the wake of the National Security Agency's Prism scandal, Apple made its customers know the specifics of the classified court orders it received from the government asking for customers' data.

Apple followed suit with other technological giants, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft in publishing the data requests it received from the government.

According to Apple's Commitment Customer Privacy published Monday from the company's official website, it did not encounter the government's PRISM program until various news organizations asked them for a statement on June 6. Hence they clarify that they "do not provide any government agency with direct access to servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order."

Following the government's authorization, Apple said in the statement that:

  • From December 1, 2012 to may 31 2013, Apple received between 4, 000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data.
  • Between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices were specified in those requests, which came from federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters.
  • The most common form of requests comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer's disease or hoping to prevent a suicide.

In order for Apple to provide this information upon governments' requests, it can be inferred that both customers' personal and non personal data were gathered from Apple's mobile devices, according to an analysis from Geeksugar.com.

A customer's personal information is consist of the name and the customer's user name. Apple obtained personal information through the Apple ID which has the customers' mailing address, phone number, email address, contact preferences and credit card information. Apple can also obtain personal information from gift certificates or share buttons which also shows the customers' name, mailing address, e-mail and phone number.

Non personal information, on the other hand, is consist of the customers' occupation, language, zip code, unique device identifier, location, time zone where Apple products is used, customer activity on Apple website, iCloud, Mobile Me and iTunes Store and information about which parts of Apple's websites people have visited as procured by cookies.

Despite of this admittance, Apple assured customers that their legal teams conduct an evaluation of each requests, "only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it."

If it is any consolation to the users, Apple said that there are information which they cannot provide government access to. Apple said that because they do not keep track of information coming from iMessage conversations, FaceTime, User location, Map searches, SIRI requests, there is no way that it can share such information to the government.

In order for customers to understand why Apple chose to cooperate with the government in some cases, it will help if customers be reminded of Apple's Privacy Policy which stated that:

"It may be necessary - by law, legal process, litigation and/or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence - for Apple to disclose your personal information. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate."