AT&T and Verizon got government data requests once every 60 seconds last year. And that’s probably lowballing it.

A University of Ottawa law professor got a set of documents from the Canadian government showing that law enforcement agencies are asking the country's telecom operators for subscriber information every 27 seconds.

That's a staggering amount, but how does it compare to the United States, where authorities are willing to record all of the calls that take place in a foreign country?

To get a sense, I decided to take a look back at the transparency reports from major US phone companies. In 2013, AT&T and Verizon together received more than one request every 60 seconds. Is that a lot? Depends. It's not as high as the rate cited in Canada. But we're also dealing with an incomplete data set here.

In its first-ever transparency report, AT&T reported receiving 301,816 requests for user data from state, local and federal authorities. Verizon's inaugural transparency report, meanwhile, shows it got 321,545. That's the equivalent of 1.2 requests every minute.