Al-Ittihad newspaper – Apple reports that the government is asking for more and more user data in 2018

The US electronics giant Apple, maker of smart phones for iPhone and iPad, has announced an increase in the number of applications received from governments around the world for collecting data on its users during the first half of this year.

The company has released its semi-annual transparency report, which details requests for information from private users and private administrations for various purposes. With over 1.3 billion Apple products in use around the world, governments' desire for user data has increased in recent years, including in the first half of last year.

According to the report, Apple has received 32,342 applications from around the world, of which 42% from Germany. Apple pointed out that the sharp increase in data requests in Germany was mainly related to the theft investigations of these devices. The United States came in second with 4,570 applications. Apple received 29,718 apps in the second half of last year.

"Apple" aims to simplify the process of publishing data request reports on its new website, "Transparency". In the past, Apple had published a brief report containing a limited amount of data, including the number of devices for which data was requested in each country and the number of devices for which data had been provided.

Apple has designed the Transparency website to be interactive, allowing users to navigate between countries and periods to see the number of applications submitted during a period or period of time. any country in the same way as the Microsoft Report on Transparency Software and Electronic Systems.

Apple is helping law enforcement agencies recover data from closed handsets from the iPhone. But his willingness to help these devices has changed in recent years due to the sharp increase in the number of requests for assistance received and the dispute with governments over methods of spying security devices on the users' phones.