Microsoft discloses law enforcement requests for user data

US tech giant Microsoft disclosed Thursday that it and its main video chat service Skype received more than 75,000 requests last year from government law enforcement agencies in the United States and four other countries to provide customer user data.

“In recent months, there has been broadening public interest in how often law enforcement agencies request customer data from technology companies and how our industry responds to these requests,” Brad Smith, a Microsoft executive vice president and the company’s general counsel said in a blog post.

Like others in the industry, including Google and Twitter, Smith said Microsoft released the information as part of a broader “commitment to transparency” in the high-tech industry.

“We are releasing publicly the total number of requests we receive from law enforcement in countries around the world and the number of potentially affected accounts identified in those requests,” Smith said.

In its report, the company said Microsoft and Skype had received in 2012 a total of 75,378 “criminal law enforcement requests” for customer information, which potentially impacted 137,424 accounts.

Only 2.1 percent—1,558 requests—resulted in the disclosure of customer content, the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant said.

The content disclosed included text and photographs from emails and data pulled from SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud computing service.