Verizon received 320,000 data requests from US government in 2013

A major US telecom carrier has published its first “transparency report,” revealing that US authorities asked it to hand over user data more than 321,000 times in 2013.

The telecommunication giant Verizon released the number on Wednesday in a transparency report it had promised following the spying scandal involving the US National Security Agency.

Of the requests the firm received, more than 164,000 were subpoenas and almost 71,000 were court orders.

The telecom firm also said it received between 1,000 and 1,999 National Security Letters, mandatory government data requests regarding national security. Disclosing the exact number of such requests is not allowed by law.

The company’s report does not show how many requests it has denied. Verizon says it will continue to release these reports and will include percentage of demands it rejected.

Verizon is the second telecom operator to publish such transparency reports. CREDO Mobile, a California-based network operator, was the first to do so. AT&T has also promised to release its first report giving an insight into user data requests it received from the government.

Verizon’s report suggests that spy agencies still heavily rely on phone-service providers for information rather than Internet companies. Google received fewer than 11,000 requests from the US government in the first six months of 2013.

Ever since American whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the scale and scope of the NSA’s spying programs last year, technology companies in the United States have criticized President Barack Obama for his failure to do enough to protect citizens’ privacy.

On Friday, President Obama ordered intelligence agencies to get court authorization before accessing phone records of American citizens. He also issued a directive that intelligence-gathering cannot be employed to suppress criticism of the United States or provide a competitive advantage to US companies.

The tech companies, however, believe Obama’s proposed reforms are just half-measures which will leave Washington’s spying programs almost untouched.