While millions of Americans were receiving the last of their Amazon Prime deliveries for the year, the company's AWS division was delivering something of its own: the final 2017 Amazon Information Request Report.
In it, we learned two things:
- "Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate" requests for information "as a matter of course."
- The specific number of legal requests received during half of 2017.
Subpoenas: 1,618
How Amazon responded:
Full response: 685
Partial response: 515
No response: 418
Search warrants: 229
How Amazon responded:
Full response: 102
Partial response: 87
No response: 40
The report also shares stats on requests from outside the U.S.
What we'd really like to know is what kind of warrants and subpoenas did Amazon reject? Were criminal cases hurt as a result? Or were these cases over-reaching and privacy was spared?
Now that's something Amazon's transparency report leaves unclear.
A little context would go a long way in this case.
