Google reveals that the FBI requests data on thousands of its customers every year

The FBI made requests for data on as many as 2,000 Google accounts last year, the Internet giant said Tuesday.

The requests were made using a controversial technique known as a 'national security letter' that allows the government to seek financial, phone and Internet data without a warrant.

Google is the first Internet company to reveal the federal government's use of national security letters to secretly retrieve data on people.

Google said it received between zero and 999 letters in 2012 that sought information on between 1,000 and 1,9999 users or accounts.

The FBI has been requesting information from the company on its users since at least 2009. The year with the highest number of requests was 2010, when the government asked for data on at least 2,999 customers.

'You’ll notice that we’re reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers,' Richard Salgado, a legal director for Google, wrote in a blog post. 'This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations.'

When the FBI requests information on a specific users, Google said it will notify the users only 'when appropriate, unless prohibited by law or court order.'

'When we receive a request for user information, we review it carefully and only provide information within the scope and authority of the request,' the company said. 'We may refuse to produce information or try to narrow the request in some cases.'

By law, the FBI can seek the name, address, length of service and local and long distance billing records of a subscriber to a wire or electronic communications service.

'The FBI can’t use NSLs to obtain anything else from Google, such as Gmail content, search queries, YouTube videos or user IP addresses,' Google said.

All Internet companies - not just Google - can get NSLs from the federal government.

Facebook told the Wall Street Journal last year that it interprets the law as applied to Facebook 'to require the production of only two categories of information: name and length of service.'