As opposed to the usual practice of publishing transparency reports annually, Dropbox has published its six month transparency report this time for the period of January to June 2014 furnishing details on the number of law enforcements made to get user information.
The transparency report notes that Dropbox has been sent 268 law enforcement requests to give user information and about 249 national security requests from the government. The company also said that it has notified at least 91 of the users about the search warrant requests, subpoenas and court orders against them.
Dropbox ensured that it clearly analyses the nature of the requests before complying with it and requests from those agencies which have not followed all the legal formalities were turned down. It further said that the aim of publishing the six month report is to make users aware of the trend and keep up with the activities going on in the service.
It has also said that the number of requests made is comparatively small as it has a total of 300 million users. Dropbox also said that orders that require too much information about the user are turned down.
Companies are under more pressure to publish their transparency reports after the revelations of Edward Snowden about NSA’s Prism Program.
Dropbox’s change in the terms and conditions also gave rise to controversies in the past and the company said that they were only changed so it can settle legal issues more smoothly. In addition, appointing Condoleezza Rice as a director earlier this year also spurred criticisms.
Other companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc are also expected to publish their transparency reports every six months.
