Apple received top marks from the Electronic Freedom Foundation in the company's "Who Has Your Back?" report for 2015. The report grades top tech companies in five categories relating to, "Online Service Providers' Privacy and Transparency Practices Regarding Government Access to User Data."
"Apple earns five stars in this year's Who Has Your Back report," the organization wrote. "This is Apple's fifth year in the report, and it has adopted every best practice we've identified as part of this report. We commend Apple for its strong stance regarding user rights, transparency, and privacy."
The EFF cited Apple's commitment to privacy, its practices, and its corporate transparency on its policies and such things as government requests for customer information.
The report also noted that, "In a public, official written format, Apple opposes the compelled inclusion of deliberate security weaknesses."
This refers to Apple's position that customers have a right to privacy, and that no government should have backdoor access to encrypted communications because backdoors can be exploited by anyone and everyone. The EFF also noted that the overwhelming majority of tech companies oppose government-mandated backdoors
All told, nine companies received five stars in this report, including: Adobe,Apple,CREDO, Dropbox, Sonic, Wickr, Wikimedia, Wordpress.com, and Yahoo.
AT&T, Verizon, and WhatsApp were all cited for, "lagging behind the industry in standing by users." Of those three, the first two—AT&T and Verizon, "received especially poor results."
Source: EFF