Facebook released the third edition of its Government Requests Report, earlier this week, and it bears grim tidings.
The report brings out the number of Government data and content removal requests received by the social networking site over a period of time, along with requests in matters concerning national security under the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and through National Security Letters.
This year such requests chart an increase of 24 percent in the first six months of 2014 against the previous six months, with governments around the world making 34,946 requests for data, while the amount of content restricted because of local laws increased about 19%.
Facebook has been involved in a legal standoff over data from the accounts of nearly 400 people, demanded by a court in New York, since mid last year. “This unprecedented request was by far the largest we’ve ever received. We’ve argued that these overly broad warrants violate the privacy rights of the people on Facebook and ignore constitutional safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures,” writes Facebook’s Deputy General Counsel, Chris Sonderby in a blog post.
All this while Facebook faced flak for its controversial newsfeed experiment, news about which was disclosed earlier this year
However, Facebook vehemently notes, “we scrutinize every government request we receive for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests.”
(Image Credit: Ksayer1)
