Coinbase Gets A Lot of Data Requests From Feds, Mostly FBI: Report
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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase today published a transparency report outlining how law enforcement requests information about its 38 million customers.
The San Francisco-based exchange disclosed that between January 1 and June 30 of this year, law enforcement requested information 1,914 times; 96.6% of these requests concerned criminal investigations. For context, that’s more than double the amount of law enforcement requests received last year by competing US-based exchange Kraken.
“These requests largely come in the form of subpoenas, but may also include search warrants, court orders, and other formal processes,” said Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s Chief legal officer in a blog post. However, Grewal said it is “restricted from disclosing some of the information requests we receive.”
Coinbase further disclosed that US law enforcement made 58% of these requests; UK authorities made 23%; Germany sent 9% of requests and European authorities made up most of the rest.
Within the US, the FBI made 30.5% of requests; Homeland Security made 16.5%; State and local police made 16.2%; the Drugs Enforcement Administration made 9.3% and the Internal Revenue Service 8.8%.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Secret Service, the Postal Inspection Service, the Department of Justice and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement also made requests.
The report comes a month after the Electronic Frontier Foundation recommended that Coinbase publish the report. The EFF said it is “increasingly concerned that payment processors are being asked to turn over information on their customers, without any mechanism for the public to know who is making those requests, or how often.”
Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer and author of the blog post, said, “we respect the legitimate interests of government authorities in pursuing bad actors who abuse others and our platform,” but that “transparency is a critical part of accountability and maintaining customer trust.”
