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Facebook: Government Agents in 74 Countries Demanded Data on 38,000 Users So Far This Year
September 02, 2013 posted by Steve Brownstein
Facebook revealed on August 27 that during the first half of 2013, government agents from 74 countries demanded that the company provide information on around 38,000 Facebook users, though nearly half of the orders were made by authorities in the United States.
Like Google and Microsoft, the social-networking giant is beginning to release figures on how often governments seek information about its customers, and, also similarly, it is hard to determine much from Facebook's data.
The company has been criticized for helping the National Security Agency secretly collect data on customers, as it has turned over some data in response to around 60 percent of that agency's requests.
The report did not make it clear how many of the approximately 26,000 government requests on 38,000 users were for law-enforcement purposes and how many were for intelligence gathering, as the federal government forbids companies from revealing exact numbers.
Colin Stretch, Facebook's general counsel company said in a blog post that "We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests. When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name."
Facebook said that it plans to release what figures it can on a regular basis.
