IDG News Service – “Yahoo received 12,444 requests from the U.S. government for user data in the first half of this year, resulting in 11,402 instances of data disclosure, it said Friday in its first transparency report. For nearly 7,000 of the U.S. requests between Jan. 1 and June 30, only non-content data was disclosed, such as basic subscriber information including email and IP addresses, billing information, names and locations, Yahoo said. But more than 4,500 U.S. government data requests resulted in the disclosure of actual content like communications from users’ Mail and Messenger accounts, Yahoo Address Book entries, files uploaded and photos on Flickr, according to the report.”

“The numbers reported above include all types of government data requests such as criminal law enforcement requests and those under U.S. national security authorities, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and National Security Letters (NSLs), if any were received. The U.S. Government does not permit us to disclose additional details regarding the number of requests, if any, under national security authorities at this time, or even to separate them in aggregate from other requests. Additionally, the government would not authorize us to separate NSLs from other government data requests or to express the NSLs that we have received, if any, as a range from 0 to 1,000-even though the government allowed other providers to do so in the past.”