Guess what. The United States is at the top of the charts among countries who make the most user data requests to tech companies. Surprising, right? Reuters compiled 2012 transparency report data from Google, Microsoft, Skype, and Twitter to find the top 10 countries who make requests, and from where the data is coming.
The U.S. government makes over twice the number of requests compared the next four on the list, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Turkey. Not that this excuses the action, but it's worth noting that the U.S. also has four times the population of these countries. Of course, the U.S. government also has PRISM, which most certainly isn't included in annual transparency reports, so there's that, too.
Click on the image above to see details about the data collection methods Reuters used.