Verizon Says It Received More Than 1,000 National Security Letters In 2013

By Ryan Knutson 

Verizon Communications Inc. said it received more than 1,000 requests for information about its subscribers on national security grounds last year, in the company's first report on official requests to turn over customer data.

The U.S. telecom giant said it received between 1,000 and 1,999 so-called National Security Letters, which are requests for customer records that don't require approval from a judge or grand jury as long as the information is relevant to national security. Recipients of individual National Security Letters are barred from disclosing it, which is why Verizon disclosed more general numbers.

The company didn't disclose the number of orders it received under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the type of requests released last summer by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Mr. Snowden's leaks set off a wide-ranging debate about the extent of the NSA's information gathering activities. They began with the leak of an order compelling Verizon to turn over "metadata" about where and when its customers were making phone calls.

"To date, the United States government has limited what we can report regarding requests in national security matters," Verizon General Counsel Randal Milch said in a blog post about the company's report. "We are not permitted at this time to report information about FISA orders."

Overall, Verizon said it received 321,545 requests from federal, state and local law enforcement for U.S. customer information, an increase from 2012.

The vast majority of the requests sought the name and address associated with a telephone number and not the content of text messages or emails, Mr. Milch wrote in the blog. Wiretaps accounted for about 5% of the total demands in 2013.

Verizon said it intends to update the report twice a year.

Write to Ryan Knutson at ryan.knutson@wsj.com