Microsoft gets 37,000 requests for user data in first half of year

September 27, 2013 07:25 PM ETIDG News Service - Judges and police investigators are on track to submit about the same number of requests to Microsoft for end user data this year as they did in 2012, according to figures released Friday.

Microsoft received 37,196 such requests worldwide in the first six months of the year, meaning it's on track to field about the same number of requests as last year, when just over 75,000 were submitted.

Microsoft disclosed the figures in its Law Enforcement Requests Report for the first half of 2013.

Five countries accounted for almost three-quarters of the requests: the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Turkey.

Microsoft said the report, which breaks down the requests by country and shows how Microsoft responded, is "valuable and useful to the community" in debating the balance between privacy and law enforcement needs.

The report doesn't include information about national security-related requests from the U.S. government, such as those made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It's illegal for Microsoft and other online firms to report detailed information about the type and volume of national security orders they receive.

Microsoft and other companies are suing the U.S. for permission to reveal that data, which is in the spotlight after disclosures that the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected and reviewed massive amounts of information about law-abiding citizens.

The requests potentially impacted about 66,500 Microsoft online accounts altogether, the company said. Microsoft provided "non-content data" in response to 77% of the requests. This can include people's names, billing addresses and IP connection data.

The company disclosed actual customer content in response to 2.2%, or just over 800, of the requests. That may have included photos, email messages and other documents. Most of these instances were in response to U.S. agencies, it said.

The requests affected "less than 0.01%" of accounts across all its services, Microsoft said. In 21% of the cases it did not hand over any data, the company said.

Most requests were for consumer accounts. Microsoft received 19 requests for enterprise email accounts. In four of those cases it disclosed customer data, and in one case it disclosed non-customer data. All those enterprise requests originated in the U.S.

To disclose non-content data, Microsoft requires a subpoena or equivalent order, and it must have a court order or warrant before handing over user content.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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What the first 64-bit iPhone chip means for you (hint: not much right now)

Apple fans have been craving some innovation for a while and the company seemed to deliver it Tuesday with the new A7 chip in the iPhone 5S, the first 64-bit processor to appear in a smartphone.

But while the A7 sets the iPhone up for the future, the short-term gains will be minimal and users might not notice a big performance difference for some time, analysts said.

[ Also on InfoWorld: All you need to know about the new iPhone. | Keep up on the day's tech news headlines with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: Wrap Up newsletter. ]

"With current mobile devices and mobile apps, there really is no advantage [to 64 bits] other than marketing -- the ability to say you're the first to have it," said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64, said it's unclear how much noticeable performance improvement users will see, at least until apps that take advantage of the new chip are released.

"Apple's going to be shipping 64-bit smartphones before anyone in the Android camp. Whether that will matter is up in the air," he said.

For sure, the new chip should give better performance than its predecessors, it's just not clear how much of that improvement will come from the fact that it's 64 bits.

The move is a breakthrough of sorts for Apple. Past iPhone processors were all 32-bit, and the move to 64 bits sets the company up for the future. Among other things, 64-bit processors can address larger amounts of memory than 32-bit chips, which will help with certain types of applications.

It should allow the iPhone to be used for heavier editing work, allowing it to take fuller advantage of programs like Adobe Photoshop, for example. And the additional memory should help with video processing, potentially enabling the iPhone to play 4K video.

Apple claimed the new chip will provide twice the CPU and graphics performance of its predecessor while still delivering long battery life. It said it "engineered iOS 7 and all the built-in apps to maximize the performance of the A7 chip."

The A7 brings "64-bit desktop-class architecture to a smartphone for the first time," Apple boasted.

It didn't provide details about the chip but it's almost certainly based on an ARM design like its predecessors. ARM announced a 64-bit version of its chip design in 2011, the ARMv8, and said it would take 18 months to two years to appear in mobile devices.

64-bit chips will also help handle the higher-end hardware in smartphones, such as high-definition screens, and will allow devices to make light work of running multiple tasks concurrently.

But the initial 64-bit iPhones don't have big increases in DRAM to take advantage of the greater memory addressability, Brookwood said. "The new iPhones don't have a big DRAM upgrade, so 64-bit won't really matter," he said.

Also, most apps today are 32-bit, and they'll need to be rewritten to take advantage of the 64-bit capabilities. ARMv8 is backward compatible with its 32-bit predecessors, so existing apps should perform fine on the new devices.

Despite Apple's assurances, its effect on battery life could also be a concern. A 32-bit processor has been adequate thus far for mobile devices, and the burst in performance and memory addressability can only mean increased power consumption, Tirias Research's McGregor said.

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