Friday, January 24, 2014, Bob Fernandez, Inquirer Staff Writer
The nation’s largest wireless phone company, which also has millions of FiOS Internet and land-line phone customers, had 321,545 requests for customer information from federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies in 2013, Verizon Communications Inc. said this week in its first “transparency report.”
Verizon did not say how much actual information it turned over to law enforcement for police investigations, only the requests.
The 2013 number was 24 percent higher than the 260,000 requests in 2011, which Verizon previously disclosed in a letter to then-Rep. Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.) in May 2012.
The majority of people have no idea that their information had been requested from Verizon, experts said.
Verizon, facing customer concerns over secret government data collection, has said it will regularly disclose law-enforcement requests for customer information in reports similar to those by Internet companies Google, Facebook and Yahoo.
Verizon’s report said that law-enforcement agencies requested 1,496 wiretaps in 2013 and 50,000 emergency requests for information – both part of the overall 321,545 in requests.
About half the requests were subpoenas in which a law-enforcement agency could request from Verizon a customer name, address, telephone or subscriber number, length of time as a customer, calling records and payment records.
Verizon also said it processed about 36,000 warrants, signed by judges, that could allow police officers access to stored digital content.