Google, Apple and Microsoft refused to provide FBI user data.

American tech companies, including Google, Apple and Microsoft, have repeatedly refused to provide access to their users' messages at the request of the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This is stated in an article published on Monday in the electronic version of the New York Times.

According to sources of the publication, in recent months, the US authorities regularly addressed these and other companies with the requirement to provide them with information about the correspondence that citizens conducted through electronic services. As a rule, such requests were made in connection with the investigation of users.

One of the most recent cases of this kind occurred in the summer of 2015.

As noted in the publication, “The Ministry of Justice, in connection with an investigation involving drugs and weapons, received a court order ordering Apple to provide messages exchanged between the suspects using iPhone smartphones. Apple responded by saying that the iMessage messaging service involves encryption of information, and therefore “the company cannot comply.”

“Officials have warned for months that such disputes were inevitable as technology companies such as Apple and Google increasingly resort to data encryption,” the publication points out. “According to several former and current law enforcement officials, similar requests have been repeatedly rejected in the past, and in this case, representatives of the Department of Justice and the FBI advocated for bringing Apple to court.”

As follows from the article, this initiative has not been implemented. The Justice Department is now in court trying to get Microsoft to provide e-mails that are stored on one of its computers.

“The conflicts with Apple and Microsoft reflect the fact that in the era following the revelations of Edward Snowden (a former US intelligence officer who told the media about a large-scale surveillance program carried out by US intelligence - corr.), technology corporations have become more resistant and demonstrate to their clients that they are trying to protect their information,” the publication emphasizes.

According to newspaper sources in law enforcement, employees of the Justice Ministry and the FBI were annoyed that the White House has not yet intervened in this matter and has not forced the company to disclose the required information.