400% increase in national security requests to Apple from the US government
By Rob Janoff [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The company stated it received more than 13,250 national security requests affecting over 9,000 accounts in the first half of 2017. Compared to the same period in 2015, this represents a threefold increase.
Perhaps in an indirect way this ties into the Net Neutrality post I made previous. Apparently national security requests to Apple alone have increased by 400% so this reveals that the US government is becoming more interested in the online activities of Apple users. Typically national security letters are sent to companies and these companies by law must comply with the US government if they have a technical capability of doing so.
Studying trend stats can allow users to know what the government is focused on, interested in, and even give hints to the reasons why. North Korea for example has cyber capabilities and the US government most likely sees a treat from North Korea, as does China and other countries. Money laundering in particular is one threat that governments have to be concerned about primarily because North Korea has a weapons program which it wants to fund, and because there are now aggressive sanctions against North Korea.
Of course I could be reading into this too much so if you think I've got it all wrong feel free to post and show me.