Washington: Verizon Communications Inc. says it received between 1,000 and 1,999 government requests for customer information related to national security last year.
The largest U.S. cellphone carrier made the disclosure Wednesday in its first report on law-enforcement data requests. Verizon and No. 1 U.S. telecom company AT&T Inc. decided late last year to begin making the information public as debate intensified over the National Security Agency's collection of hundreds of millions of Americans' phone records under secret court order.
The NSA program was revealed in June in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Verizon plans to update the report twice a year.
The requests, known as national security letters, that Verizon received were in addition to 321,545 demands for customer data last year from U.S. federal and local law-enforcement agencies.
"The past year saw an intense focus around the world on government demands to obtain customer data," Randal Milch, Verizon's general counsel and executive vice president for public policy, said in a statement. "We believe this transparency report is a constructive addition to the ongoing conversation about privacy and public safety."
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