Joining the parade of technology companies that are releasing "transparency reports" as a window into government legal pressure, Verizon announced on Wednesday that it received over 321,000 total orders from various American law enforcement agencies in 2013. It is the first major telecom to publish such a report. (Virtual network operator Credo Mobile did so earlier this month.)

"We do not release customer information unless authorized by law, such as a valid law enforcement demand or an appropriate request in an emergency involving the danger of death or serious physical injury," the company wrote.

However, between 2001 and 2004, Verizon and other telcos did hand over massive amounts of data to American government agencies under no statutory or other legal authority.

In October 2012 , the Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling in a case that challenged a Bush-era law (the FISA Amendments Act) retroactively giving telecommunications firms—including Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T—legal immunity after performing warrantless wiretapping at the government’s request. By letting the lower court ruling stand, the Supreme Court effectively wiped out related cases pending against Verizon pertaining to user data handover. The court affirmed the legality of the retroactive immunity statute

Of requests in 2013, Verizon now says that over 6,000 included "pen register or trap and trace orders," which compel carriers to hand over metadata in real-time.

As Verizon describes it: "With a pen register order we must afford real-time access to the numbers that a customer dials (or IP addresses that a customer visits); with a trap and trace order we must afford real-time access to the numbers that call a customer. Such orders do not authorize law enforcement to obtain the contents of any communication."

Additionally, Verizon said that it received 1,000 to 2,000 National Security Letters, which are under gag order by default and have been increasingly challenged in court. As the company added:

Our Report reflects the fact that telecom providers receive more government demands than companies in perhaps any other industry. Information about individuals’ use of their communications equipment has become a uniquely important tool for law enforcement to protect citizens and bring wrongdoers to justice. As such, it should come as no surprise that the number of government demands directed to the major telecom providers is much greater than the number of demands directed to companies that do not offer the same communications services. Overall, we saw an increase in the number of demands we received in 2013, as compared to 2012.

The Verizon report has drawn some praise from the civil libertarian crowd so far.

"With this report, Verizon has set a strong precedent for transparency within the telecommunications industry," said Harley Geiger, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, in a statement. "The report has a level of detail that should be followed by other companies—including statistics on requests for location data, content, phone records, and cell tower dumps, as well as specifying the legal authorities used.

"Verizon consistently telling government agents to get a warrant to compel disclosure of customers’ communications content is a crucial customer privacy protection. As Verizon noted, however, the US government restricts transparency regarding national security requests. We believe the government should authorize detailed company reporting on these requests, and we support Verizon’s pledge to provide more information if reforms are made."