Dive summary: 

• Apple is third, after Facebook and Microsoft, in a line of major digital companies releasing information about the number of national security data requests they received. 
• The government has cleared the Internet companies to share information as long as they report numbers in a range instead of specifically.
• Apple was on the lower end of requests with 4,000 to 5,000 requests that affected between 9,000 to 10,000 user devices or accounts. 

From the article: 

"Apple had less to offer the feds.

'There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it,' the statement said. 'For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers' location, Map searches or Siri requests in an identifiable form.'"