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August 27, 2013 7:07 pm
US tops league of governments probing Facebook users
By Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco
Facebook©Bloomberg
Facebook received more demands from the US government for information about its users than from all other countries combined, the social network said on Tuesday.
The publication of Facebook's first transparency report follows weeks of disclosures about US intelligence agencies' Prism programme and other data-gathering techniques that have raised questions about the scale and legality of online surveillance conducted in the name of national security.
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Facebook's data aligns with similar disclosures by Google and Twitter that suggest the US makes much more frequent demands for personal information about the people using these sites than other countries.
The 11,000 to 12,000 user data requests that Facebook received from the US authorities in the first six months of 2013, covering 20,000 to 21,000 individuals, marks a 20 per cent increase in the number of requests over the second half of last year.
That compares with Google's 8,438 US requests in the second half of last year, relating to 14,791 accounts, about 40 per cent of its total.
Facebook said it complied with 79 per cent of the latest requests for information such as names, IP addresses and account contents. It did not provide additional details about what information it gave to the US government but said that the “vast majority” involved criminal cases, rather than national security matters.
After the US, governments requesting the most data from Facebook included India, with 3,245, Germany, Italy and France. It handed over more than two-thirds of the 2,337 accounts about which the UK government demanded details.
“We have stringent processes in place to handle all government data requests,” Colin Stretch, Facebook's general counsel said, repeating his call for “greater transparency” from the authorities in these situations.
“We scrutinise each request for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and require a detailed description of the legal and factual bases for each request. We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests.”
Privacy International “commended” Facebook for the disclosure, which it said had been a “long time coming”, but noted that leaks from the US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden suggested that governments were collecting user data from telecoms networks and other means that may not require web companies' co-operation.
“The usefulness of transparency reports hinges on governments abiding by the rule of law,” Privacy International said.
“We now know that these reports only provide a limited picture of what is going on, and it is time that governments allow companies to speak more freely regarding the orders they receive.”
Facebook said the report “contains the total number of requests we've received from each government, including both criminal and national security requests”, and that it would publish regular updates to the figures.
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ReportVSO | August 28 4:00am | Permalink
Rosebud. Since You have figured it out by requests per 100,000,000 residents, there is nothing naive in it. Just facts. The USA and UK are in the same league. Hence, the domestic law enforcement structures apparatus incursion to research whomever they care in numbers activities tends to match it.-:)
Reportrosebud | August 28 2:55am | Permalink
On a per capita basis UK and US requests are about the same. This article is fairly naive in not making that point.
ReportVSO | August 28 2:54am | Permalink
Actually, they don't. If the FBI becomes curious for any reason about your "private" Facebook details, bank records, web browsing history and you are an American, then there is no obligation according to the law as it is written right now to go to judges and obtain the court warrant. A simple "national security letter" suffices for such purposes. The alternative option to become acquainted with naturalized citizens or resident aliens is through made up pretense under FISA rubber stamping judiciary permission.

PS For criminal cases the FBI do request regular federal court warrants. If it is for vaguely defined intelligence gathering it is laughable to presume that so many hoops must be jumped to hobble the efficiency.

#politics