On August 27, 2013, social networking giant Facebook has unveiled its first Global Government Requests Report, in order to provide more transparency on the increasing number of government requests for user data. The report has been released after allegations were made by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who stated that some of the biggest Internet companies hand over data on millions of users to national intelligence agencies on a regular basis.
The social network has become the latest company to release the data, after other major companies like Microsoft and Google have done so already. Colin Stretch, the Facebook general counsel in a blog post said, “We want to make sure that the people who use our service understand the nature and extent of the requests we receive and the strict policies and processes we have in place to handle them”.
The report by Facebook mentioned in detail the countries that requested information about users and the number of requests received from each of the countries in question. The report also mentioned the number of users or user accounts specified in such requests.
The social network has more than 1.15 billion users across the globe and responded to requests for information about almost 38,000 users made by governments in 74 countries in the first half of 2013.
Photo Credits: Times Live
