Leaseweb supports the idea of an open and safe Internet. As one of the world’s largest hosting and IT infrastructure companies, with approximately 3-4 % of all Internet traffic generated by Leaseweb customers, we believe that transparency on the issues we face and how we address those issues is very important. Therefore we are unveiling our Law Enforcement Transparency Report for the first six months of 2013. Again we hope it will contribute to a safer and more open Internet with a proper balance of rights.
Leaseweb believes that clients and other stakeholders deserve a clear articulation of Leaseweb’s obligations and responsibilities to better understand how we ensure the highest quality of service, while adhering to the law. Customers are increasingly using technology to communicate and to store private and sensitive information. Like others in the technology industry, we believe it is important for the public to have transparent information about law enforcement access to customer data.
The company policy of Leaseweb on the subject of Internet content is clear. We are content agnostic, meaning we host all content as long as it is legal in the jurisdiction in which it is hosted.
Scope
With the above in mind we are now unveiling an update to our Leaseweb Transparency Report. We have compiled this report with the data for the first six months of 2013. The goal of this report is to shed light on the following types of law enforcement requests and/or court orders we have received:
- Government requests for customer information
- Government requests for forensic images
- Government requests to remove content
- Government requests for lawful intercepts
- Child abuse material notices
This data covers law enforcement requests and/or court orders for the separate Leaseweb operating entities received from January until the end of June 2013. We only received requests related to our dedicated hosting and cloud offerings. Our shared webhosting, domain name, and colocation offerings generated no requests.
A new item is lawful intercepts (aka wiretaps). Due to feedback received on our initial transparency report, we have now split up the number government requests for customer data. Totally rejected request (no data was given to Law Enforcement) and partially rejected requests (some data was given to Law Enforcement, but not all requested data) were counted separately.
Also, child abuse material notices have been subdivided into notices received, total number of pictures reported (URLs) and total number of child abuse material websites (websites) reported.
Figures 2013: January 1 – June 30
| Netherlands | United States | Germany | |
| Customer information | 57 | 4 | 130 |
| *partially rejected | 14 | 3 | – |
| *totally rejected | 39 | – | 40 |
| Child abuse material | 165 | 2 | 7 |
| *websites | 66 | – | 2 |
| *URLs | 5115 | 7 | 1328 |
| Lawful intercepts | 3 | – | 1 |
| Removal of content | – | – | 1 |
| Forensic images | 3 | – | 1 |
The figures above specify the total number of valid law enforcement requests Leaseweb received in the first half of 2013. Leaseweb rejects law enforcement requests, in total or in part, if they are invalid, incomprehensible, or otherwise have no basis under an appropriate law, or we do not have the requested data available.
Foreign requests
Leaseweb maintains operations with a physical presence in three countries. Therefore, we only disclose data in these three countries as we have the ability to validate the lawfulness of requests for these locations. Direct requests from foreign authorities are refused. Normally we will advise requesting authorities on how they can obtain the data. For this, the foreign authority needs to file a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) request with the competent authority in the jurisdiction of the operating company that holds the data. Leaseweb operating companies cannot divulge information held by other Leaseweb operating companies, as they have no access to this data. We therefore also reject requests from a national authority if they request customer data from a foreign Leaseweb entity.
| Netherlands | United States |
Germany | |
| Foreign law enforcement requests (foreign to Leaseweb subsidiary) | 3 | – | 3 |
| National law enforcement requests for foreign Leaseweb subsidiary data | – | 4 | 24 |
Company background
Leaseweb is a leading Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider serving a worldwide portfolio of 15,000 customers ranging from SMBs to enterprises. Services include Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Hosting, Colocation, and Dedicated Hosting supported by exceptional customer service and technical support. With more than 60,000 servers under management, Leaseweb has provided infrastructure for mission-critical websites, Internet applications, email servers, security, and storage services since 1997.
The company operates six data centers in the U.S. and Europe, all of which are backed by a superior worldwide network with a total capacity of more than 3.5 Tbps. Leaseweb offers services through its various subsidiaries (operating companies), being Leaseweb Netherlands B.V. (“Leaseweb Netherlands”), Leaseweb USA, Inc. (“Leaseweb USA”), and Leaseweb Deutschland GmbH (“Leaseweb Germany”). For more information, visit www.leaseweb.com.