Microsoft handed over subscriber data for 1899 Australians to law enforcement officials

MICROSOFT last year released the identification details of at least 1900 Australians to law enforcement officials. 

The revelation is contained in the software company’s first Law Enforcement Requests report which shows that Australian authorities were the seventh most frequent requester of Microsoft user information.

The Microsoft report said 2238 requests were made by Australian authorities involving 3081 accounts.

In response to those demands, the software company said it did not disclose any Australian user’s content (such as photographs or emails, for example).

But it did disclose “subscriber data” for 1899 requests, which involved at least that many people and potentially many more.

The report said subscriber data typically included name, e-mail address, credit card details, date of birth and IP address.

Microsoft General Counsel and Executive Legal & Corporate Affairs Vice President Brad Smith said internationally Microsoft received 75,378 law enforcement requests for customer information and those requests involved 137,424 accounts.

Only 2.1 percent, or 1558 requests, resulted in the disclosure of customer content.

More than 99 percent of requests were made by US authorities but there was also 14 disclosures of customer content to authorities in Brazil, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.

Microsoft plans to release a Law Enforcement Requests Report every six months. Google has been publishing similar reports for three years.

 heraldsun.com.au 26 Mar 2013

Corporations have been heeding to the illegal actions of 'law enforcers' for many years now.

On many occasions the police 'force' has no warrants or even justified reasons to obtain private information.

It is all part of the 'globalisation' policy of the new world order to invade the privacy of every online individual.

The 'If you haven't done anything wrong, you should not hide' catch phrase is no longer a valid reason.