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Indian Govt Follows U.S. in Volume of Requests for Facebook Data

Indian government made 9,853 data requests to Facebook, the social media company showed in its Transparency Report.

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India was second only to the United States in asking Facebook for data and access to accounts, according to the annual Transparency Report 2017 released by the social media company. The Indian government made a total of 9,853 data requests to Facebook, the transparency report, which covers the period of January to June 2017, said.

With over 201 million users, India is also the second largest market for Facebook.

The figures for India for the first half of 2017 show almost a 55 per cent rise over corresponding figures for last year. The volume of requests stood at 6,324 in the first half of 2016, and rose to 7,289 in the second half of last year.

Over 9,690 requests were made by the Indian government regarding legal process, and access to 13,490 user accounts was sought. The social media site said it complied with 54.30 per cent of these legal process requests.

Indian government agencies asked for 163 emergency data requests. Under the emergency data request category, it asked for access to 262 user data accounts of which Facebook accepted 36 per cent. The requests for content restrictions were made by law enforcement agencies and the India Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) within the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Majority of the content was in violation of local laws of defamation and content violating religion and hate speech. A total of 1,228 pieces of content were restricted in response to the requests made.

Facebook also received preservation requests, which means that certain account records are to be saved for official criminal investigations for 90 days pending the receipt of the formal legal process. As per the report, it got 1,166 preservation requests.

The U.S government, which made the most requests to the social media firm, requested for data of 32,716 users and access to 52,280 accounts. The United Kingdom, at number 3, asked Facebook for data of 6,845 users and access to 8,167 user accounts.

The requests made by the U.S. government rose by 26 per cent from the last six months of 2016 to this June. The number has been steadily rising since Facebook started releasing these reports in 2013. The volume of data that the United States asks for has roughly tripled in four years.

“We continue to carefully scrutinize each request we receive for account data — whether from an authority in the U.S., Europe, or elsewhere — to make sure it is legally sufficient,” Chris Sonderby, the company’s Deputy Counsel general, wrote in a blogpost. “If a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back, and will fight in court, if necessary.”

The report also talks about disruptions affecting access to Facebook products and services. The site was down 21 times in total during January to June 2017 period.

This was the first time Facebook included data related to intellectual property in the report. “For the first time, we are expanding the report beyond government requests to provide data regarding reports from rights holders related to intellectual property (IP) — covering copyright, trademark, and counterfeit,” Sonderby said.

In the period mentioned, Facebook received 224,464 copyright reports about content on Facebook, 41,854 trademark reports and 14,279 counterfeit reports. Globally, the requests for account data increased by 21 percent, from 64,279 in the second half of 2016 to 78,890.

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