Facebook says countries sought data on 38,000 users in first half of 2013
The government asked the social networking platform Facebook for information on 12 users in the first six months of 2013.
The network however did not provide the data though it complied with most requests, the firm said in its first
report on the scale of data inquiries it gets from countries around the world.
Governments sought information on over 38,000 Facebook users during the first half of 2013, according to the report, titled ‘Global Government Request Report‘.
It follows allegations by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that practically every major Internet company – including Facebook, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp – routinely hands over troves of data on potentially millions of users to national intelligence agencies.
The network, which has over 1 billion users worldwide, said the vast majority of the government requests made to Facebook and many other companies seeking account information in official investigations relate to criminal
A screenshot of the report showing requests made by Bangladesh government.
cases, such as robberies or kidnappings.
In many of these cases, the requests seek basic subscriber information, such as name and length of service while other requests may also seek IP address logs or actual account content.
The report contains both criminal and national security requests, it added.
Source: The Daily Star
