India 2nd to US in Facebook data access requests

Centre sought details of 4,144 users in the January-June period but only half the requests were entertained by the social networking website

During the first six months of this year, the Union government sought information about 4,144 users of popular social networking site Facebook, putting India second on the list of countries in terms of the number of details sought, after the US.

Between January and June, the government sent 3,245 requests to Facebook, of which half were complied with, the networking site said in its first transparency report. The US had sent 11,000-12,000 requests, seeking information on 20,000-21,000 users.

While technology giant Google has brought out transparency reports for the last couple of years, revelations on the US government’s surveillance programme, PRISM, have prompted other technology firms such as Facebook to follow suit.

In a statement, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said the company followed stringent processes to handle government data requests. “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 base for each request.” The company also acted against many of these requests in case of legal deficiencies and narrowed the scope of overly broad or vague requests, he added.

According to the Facebook report, the company received 25,607 requests from 71 countries, seeking information about 37,954 users. It said when it was required to comply with a particular request, it often shared only basic user information, such as name.

“As we have said many times, we believe while governments have an important responsibility to keep people safe, it is possible to do so while being transparent,” Stretch said. “We strongly encourage all governments to provide greater transparency about their efforts aimed at keeping the public safe, and we will continue to be aggressive advocates for greater disclosure,” he added.

Top five nations in terms of total requests sent

Country	Total Requests	User/Accounts requested	% of requests were some data produced
United States	11,000-12,000	20,000-21,000	79.00%
India	3245	4144	50.00%
United Kingdom	1975	2337	68.00%
Germany	1886	2068	37.00%
Italy	1705	2306	53.00%
Source: Facebook Global Government Requests Report