Apple, TikTok, Google, and Facebook give your data to law enforcement up to 80% of the time

Law enforcement can easily access your data, and some tech companies are willing to provide that information upon request. In fact, they comply 70% to 80% of the time.

In light of Pavel Durov’s recent arrest, there are concerns about whether or not the Telegram CEO will give users' data to law enforcement.

Telegram is known as a sort of ‘dark web for dummies,’ where legal and illegal services are exchanged. You don't need to know the intricacies of the dark web or the processes needed to access it. Instead, those looking to commit crimes can do so freely on the “encrypted” platform.

But as the story of Durov and Telegram unfolds, we come to understand that the platform isn’t encrypted by default, and your nefarious deeds could be accessed by law enforcement.

That’s if Telegram hands over that data, and it has, on occasion. In January 2024, Cyber Ghost reported that Telegram had leaked users' data to the German authorities despite being known as the anti-privacy infringement platform.

Despite Apple, Google, TikTok, and Meta’s claims that data privacy is of the utmost importance, big tech will usually give your data to law enforcement when requested.

On average, 70% to 80% of the time.

Well, at least that’s the case for Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, which received approximately 270,000 law enforcement agency requests for user information between January and June 2023. The social media network disclosed “some user data” for nearly 77% of requests, according to the tech giants transparency report.

Google also disclosed “some” information to law enforcement when asked. In May 2023, 81% of requests made by law enforcement resulted in the disclosure of “some information.”

Big tech companies often don’t disclose what information was shared and tend to just say that “some” of the information was shared with law enforcement.

The same goes for Apple. Between January and June of 2023, Apple received almost 18,000 data requests, and the company granted access 83% of the time in the first half of 2023 and 78% in the second half of the year.

Even TikTok gives your data to law enforcement. In 2023, law enforcement requested users’ data over 10,000 times (this includes emergency requests, which don’t require extra legal evaluation and are only reserved for emergencies). The “transparency report” on TikTok’s website breaks down the percentage of data disclosed by country.

In the US, information was disclosed 71% of the time, in the UK, 68% of the time, and in Australia, 57% of the time.

So, it seems pretty simple for law enforcement to access users’ data, and most of the time, this data is handed over without fuss.

But what kind of data does law enforcement request? Well, according to The New York Times this information can include names, addresses, contact information and even the content of emails, text messages, call logs, photos, videos, calendars, and contact lists. But the list most definitely goes on.

What’s even more concerning is that, in most cases, big tech isn’t allowed to reveal that your personal information has been given to law enforcement until six months to a year after the data has been disclosed. This is something called a gag order.

Law enforcement often requires warrants to obtain your data, and some of the warrants that The Guardian highlighted are troubling.

A “keyword search warrant” or “reverse search warrant” allows law enforcement to obtain information on anyone who typed in a specific keyword or terms within a certain time frame. For example, if someone typed in an address that was later a part of a crime.

Another warrant highlighted by The Guardian is a “geofence warrant” or “reverse location warrant,” which allows law enforcement to access the device information of any user who was in a particular location at a specific time.

Geofence warrants were supposedly used on January 6th when supporters of former US President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building after Trump lost the presidential election in 2020.

Although these warrants may seem useful they do raise real data protection concerns.

Perhaps this is why Telegram doesn’t appear to hand over users’ data to law enforcement, which may have been partly the reason for Durov’s arrest.

At the time of writing, Cybernews attempted to check whether Telegram has a transparency report available online and it seems that there was no transparency report for US users.

This begs the question: Is the platform failing to comply with law enforcement's potential data requests, or is Telegram sending users’ data more frequently than we might think?

Either way, if you’re engaging in criminal activity via any platform governed by Apple, Byte Dance, Google, or Meta, law enforcement might have access to more information than you think.