- Coinbase releases first ever transparency report
- United State agencies dominates request for consumer data
- Coinbase plans to release report more frequently
Popular US crypto exchange, Coinbase, has made a transparency report available to the public which details the number of requests they get from information and how they have handled such requests they deem to be legitimate from the government.
The crypto exchange giant, in a statement, said its commitment towards ensuring illegitimate financial activities do not happen on its platform necessitated the need for it to respect the “lawful interests” of the government.
In the first half of the year, Coinbase had received over 1500 requests from different governments of the world, with a majority of them relating to issues of criminal investigation and a negligible few on civil or administrative investigations.
The United States and her agencies account for over 50% of the requests for information with agencies like FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Drug Enforcement Agencies (DEA) filing the most request.
Other countries with a notable amount of request is the United Kingdom and Germany who together with the United States of America Make up 90% of the requests.
Coinbase also made it known that the requests from the law enforcement agencies usually comes in the form of a subpoena while in some rare occasions the request comes in form of a search warrant, court order, or other formal processes recognized by law.
Coinbase said when the report have been found to be valid and legitimate, they have always done well to respond but in cases where they have found some loopholes in the request, then such requests are not honored.
Transparency Report to be released regularly
Coinbase, after releasing its first ever transparency report has made it known that it will henceforth make it a point of duty to release the report regularly. However, how often this report would be released was not made known.
You will recall that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in September, had called out Coinbase because the organization had hitherto refused to release a transparency report.
