US, India most nosy governments in the world.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BANGALORE: India ranked top in the latest report released by Facebook regarding requests received from government and other agencies for restricting access to derogatory or hate-content on the social media site.
The report of Facebook acknowledges that it has denied access to 5,000 pieces of hate content within the first six months of this year in India; the highest compared to any other country.
India has the second largest number of Facebook users which exceed 100 million, standing only next to the US.
According to Facebook’s Government Requests Report, other countries like Turkey (1,893) and Pakistan (1,773) had also approached the social media giant with similar requests.
The report read, “We restricted access in India to a number of pieces of content reported primarily by law enforcement officials and the India Computer Emergency Response Team under local laws prohibiting criticism of a religion or the state.”
The report also mentions India as the second country after the US, sending more requests for gaining access to user accounts.
According to the report, Facebook had received 4,559 requests from India for getting access to data and accounts of 5,958 users. Facebook gave positive response to 50.87 per cent of these requests.
Facebook had released a similar report during the last quarter of 2013, but the number of requests sent by India has gone up to 26% compared to last report and more than 40% higher than the report that published in the first quarter of 2013.
The report also says that Facebook received 15,433 requests from the US for gaining or restricting access to 23,667 user accounts, out of which 80.15% of the requests saw data being divulged to the authorities.
Facebook Deputy General Counsel Chris Sonderby said in a blogpost, “since our first report, we’ve seen an increase in government requests for data and for content restrictions. In the first six months of 2014, governments around the world made 34,946 requests for data – an increase of about 24 per cent since the last half of 2013.”
He also added that “we scrutinise 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.”
Facebook, which has around 1.3 billion users worldwide, has sent out a strong message through the report that it will continue to work with industry and civil societies to push for additional transparency.