Government Requests Transparency Report

Fiscal Year 2017
(December 1, 2016 - November 30, 2017)

Last Updated: January 18, 2018

Adobe, like all hosted service providers, is required to disclose customer data when we receive valid legal process from a government agency with jurisdiction. In this – our fourth annual transparency report -- we disclose information about all government requests seeking access to Adobe customer data that we received during our fiscal year 2017 (FY 2017), the services to which they relate, the country of origin, and how we responded. Every request we receive is carefully scrutinized by the Adobe Trust & Safety team to ensure law enforcement is entitled to the data they seek with the type of process they have obtained, and is managed in accordance with our law enforcement response policies, which you will find here.

Government Requests By Service: During FY 2017, most government requests we received related to users of our Photoshop Mix photo editing service (11 requests), our Creative Cloud service (6 requests), or to customer Adobe ID accounts or Adobe store transactions (3 requests). The remaining government requests received sought information about users of the following apps or services: Adobe Acrobat (3 requests), our Lightroom photo storage service (3 requests), Acrobat Sign (2 requests), Adobe AIR (1 request), and Behance (1 request). Some requests we received sought data about users with accounts on multiple Adobe services.

Government Requests By Country of Origin: We received two requests from international governments this year (one each from France and Spain). This year, we made no disclosures in response to those requests because none adhered to Adobe’s policy requiring service of process on Adobe Systems Software Ireland Limited when seeking data about customers who reside outside of North America. As a result, all disclosures we made this year were in response to legal process received from U.S. federal or state authorities.

Some Additional Interesting Facts:

• No Enterprise Customer Data Disclosed: As in previous years, all disclosures made in FY 2017 related to individual consumer accounts. We received no requests, and made no disclosures, related to enterprise customer accounts.
• No Customer Content Disclosed Without A Search Warrant: Adobe does not disclose customer content stored in our cloud services (such as photos, videos or documents) unless we receive a search warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause under relevant state or federal law. We received search warrants in all 12 matters where we disclosed customer content.
• No National Security Requests Received: As of the end of FY 2017, Adobe still has not received any form of national security process, such as a National Security Letter (NSL) or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order.
• No Delaying Customer Notice Unless We Are Legally Obligated To Do So: As we did in previous years, this year we rejected a number of requests from governments to delay notice to our users because the requests were made informally. We only delay notice to our customers where we are legally obligated to do so -- for example, when we receive a delayed notice order (DNO) issued by a court. We then notify our customer of the government request for their data after the DNO expires.
• No Permanent Gag Orders: Sometimes Adobe receives DNOs that are permanent (i.e., they expressly never expire) or indefinite (i.e., they say they will expire 'on further order of the court'). Permanent or indefinite gag orders are unconstitutional prior restraints on speech and we challenge them in court. In FY 2017, we won this court ruling supporting our position.
  
• No Backdoors: Adobe has not built ‘backdoors’ for any government – foreign or domestic – into our products or services. All government requests for user data need to come through the front door (i.e., by serving valid legal process upon the appropriate Adobe legal department). Adobe vigorously opposes legislation in the US and overseas that would in any way weaken the security of our products or our users’ privacy protections.

Government Requests Received