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Microsoft wasn't hammered by surveillance requests in 2016

Ooops?

other

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft released its Transparency Report revealing that it had received "1,000 to 1,499 surveillance requests for foreign intelligence purposes (known as FISA) from January to June 2016." There's only one problem though -- it didn't. Today, Microsoft updated the report to say that stat was an error, and the number of orders it had received in 2016 is actually somewhere between 0 - 499, as it has been in previous years. Unfortunately, the company is not allowed to release more specific data, so we don't know if it has actually changed or by how much. A spokesperson told Reuters the mistake was a "human error."

Microsoft:

*Editor's note on April 25, 2017: Our latest U.S. National Security Orders Report and accompanying blog post contained an error, reporting that from Jan. 1 – June 30, 2016 Microsoft received 1,000 – 1,499 FISA orders seeking disclosure of customer content. The correct range is 0 – 499 FISA orders seeking disclosure of customer content. All the other data disclosed in the National Security Orders Report was correct.

Microsoft corrected the mistake as soon as we realized it was made to ensure the accuracy of our reporting. We've put additional safeguards in place to ensure the numbers we report are correct. We apologize for the error."