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Pinterest Releases First Year-Long Transparency Report

 & David Murphy Freelancer

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As you might expect, the U.S. government doesn't care all that much about your pinned content. Or, to frame it another way, there just doesn't seem to be all that much on Pinterest that necessitates investigation by U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Pinterest has officially released its first-ever (full-year) transparency report, and the service just didn't receive that that many legal requests throughout 2014. In total, it receive 39 requests from agencies within the United States, and a whopping two requests from international agencies (one Canadian and one Australian).

"Our policy is to give notice to users whose information has been requested unless prohibited by law (e.g., by protective order or applicable statute – see guidelines for more info). Of the 39 US law enforcement requests we received, we were prohibited by law from notifying the user 16 times. None of the 3 civil requests we recieved prohibited us from notifying the user," reads Pinterest's report.

The 39 different requests from law enforcement agencies broke down into 10 warrants, 14 grand jury subpoenas, seven administrative subpoenas, and eight court subpoenas—in other words, a few more subpoenas in total (29) than warrants (10).

While the service refused to produce any data for requests from international law enforcement agencies, it did produce some kind of data for most of the requests it received from domestic agencies (32). Only in seven instances of requests from domestic agencies did Pinterest refuse to produce any information—under the belief that the "nature, scope or content of the request is objectionable or defective in some way."

Pinterest's report indicates the service received about three times as many legal requests in 2014 than it did in 2013. That said, the company's 2013 report only covered from July to December 2013—that's not quite a full year, though we think it's safe to say that the service would have likely received even fewer requests in 2013 than 2014.

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David Murphy

David Murphy

Freelancer

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month gig turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he later rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors. For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).

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