New analysis from digital privateness agency Proton has revealed the staggering scale of how Google, Apple, and Meta share person information with US authorities authorities, and the numbers are solely rising.
In accordance with the findings, the three tech giants have collectively handed over information from greater than 3.5 million person accounts over the previous decade, representing an increase of greater than 770% since tech corporations first started publishing transparency stories on authorities requests. The info shared consists of emails, information, messages, and different extremely private info.
The tempo exhibits no signal of slowing. Within the first half of 2025 alone, info from greater than 200,000 US accounts was disclosed. When information shared underneath the Overseas Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is factored in, the whole climbs to roughly 6.9 million person accounts.
The pattern isn’t confined to the US. European authorities requests for person information rose by round 40% year-on-year, leaping from 164,472 accounts within the first half of 2024 to 231,199 in the identical interval of 2025. Proton attributes the sheer quantity of disclosures to the truth that information held by main platforms will not be protected by end-to-end encryption, leaving it accessible to authorized requests.
Raphael Auphan, COO of Proton, warned of the long-term implications: “Huge Tech corporations have collected years of searches, messages, information, location information, and different exercise, usually beginning when customers are kids. Every request can faucet into this detailed historical past, revealing patterns, routines, and relationships. The difficulty isn’t that corporations comply — they’re legally obligated to take action — however that they’ve amassed such huge, centralised shops of information and have the power to decrypt it at will. Governments can change, legal guidelines can change, and till full end-to-end encryption is applied, each request has the potential to reveal a long time of personal life.”
The analysis comes in opposition to a troubling backdrop within the US. In March 2026, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the company is buying commercially obtainable location information on People with out acquiring warrants, a observe that privateness advocates argue circumvents conventional authorized safeguards and raises critical civil liberties issues.
Proton, which protects greater than 100 million accounts and over 100,000 companies globally, applies end-to-end encryption by default throughout its companies, which means that even Proton itself can not entry person emails, information, calendar entries, or contacts. The corporate argues that the answer to mass authorities entry to information lies not in hoping platforms will resist authorized stress, however in making certain the info is rarely accessible to start with.
