Law Enforcement and Government Data Requests

2021 Transparency Report

In General

As part of official investigations, law enforcement agencies and other governmental officials (e.g., an Office of a District Attorney) sometimes request certain information from technology services providers. This LinkNYC Transparency Report is intended to provide our users with an understanding of the number of valid requests we receive from law enforcement and governmental entities, and how we handle them.

Our Requirements

We require a valid subpoena, court order, or other valid legal demand in order to process a governmental information request. While we are legally obligated to respond to lawful requests for customer-related information, we are also committed to protecting our customers’ privacy. We carefully review all legal requests we receive and actively push back on requests that are procedurally deficient, overly-broad, or otherwise improper or invalid.

Data Requests and Responsive Disclosures

Generally, government requests are made pursuant to a criminal investigation. In many cases, we produce only some or none of the information requested, either because we do not have it, or because we do not believe the request is valid. The table below lays out the number of valid data requests we received, and of those requests, how often we disclosed at least some information.

Valid Data Requests Received Valid Data Requests Which Resulted in Some Responsive Disclosure of Information
January 4 0
February 6 3
March 3 0
April 7 1
May 3 1
June 4 0
July 6 0
August 5 1
September 3 2
October 7 4
November 2 1
December 1 0
Total 51 13
Nature of Information Requested # of Disclosures
Video 0
Subscriber name 0
Subscriber account info 0
Device information (MAC, etc) 0
IP address 0
Location of a Link that made a call at a specific time 8
Call records 5
Recipients of Information # of Disclosures
New York State District Attorney, NY County 9
New York State District Attorney, Brooklyn County 1
Police Department of City of New York 1
Fire Department of City of New York 2

Please review our Privacy Policy and FAQs for specific information about how information is treated, our user notification policies, and our obligations to respond to information requests.