Facebook’s bi-annual ‘Global Government Requests Report‘ published under its newsroom blog suggests an increase of 9% in government requests of Facebook users’ data, in the later half of 2016. The report says that the company received 64,279 user data requests from 105 countries of the world.
Facebook stated that the data requests have been about people who used Facebook.
“In many of these cases, the government is requesting basic subscriber information, such as name and length of service. Requests may also ask for IP address logs or account content.”
The global snapshot
The top ten countries in the report make a grand total of 55K (86%) of all the 64K requests. United States is the leader with 26K requests in six months. India remains second while Argentina rounds up the top 10 with 995 requests. Pakistan is ranked number 9 in the list of governments that have requested user data from Facebook.
5 European countries including UK, France, and Germany make the top ten list as well.
Also read: Pakistan’s Looming Social Media Ban – What’s The Game Afoot?
The Pakistani Snapshot
There were 1K requests made by the Pakistani government. Four out of the 1K requests were considered as urgent. The report also shows that the Pakistan government made 6 requests to remove content that was believed to be blasphemous. The report also provided information about a major Facebook failure within Pakistan.
The comparative analysis
The comparative analysis shows that there has been 41% increase in the Pakistan Government’s user data requests from last year. The increase is indicative of the increased policing that users have to face in Pakistan.
The next report will be an interesting case study to see the increase of requests from Pakistan government. The controversy around blasphemous Facebook pages that hit Pakistan in first half of 2017 will become more evident.
You can view the full Pakistan statistics at the link.
You can view the full report at the link.
You can see the full report available in comma delimited ‘csv’ file for further analysis and information.
Regarding the blasphemous content issue raised by Pakistan, the Facebook administration has maintained the following stance in the released data:
Based on legal requests from the Pakistan Telecom Authority and Federal Investigation Agency, we restricted access to items that were alleged to violate local laws prohibiting blasphemy and condemnation of the country’s independence.
The number of pieces of content restricted has been provided to be 6.
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