Spying And Police Requests For Facebook Data Up 24%

Facebook continues to fight dragnets for private data by governments, but the combined number of requests from local law enforcement and federal spy agencies like the NSA went up 24% from the last half of 2013 to the first half of 2014, according to Facebook’s new government requests report. In the US, Facebook received 15,433 data requests about 23,667 accounts, and was forced to provide data for 80.15% of the requests.

Meanwhile, countries with local laws about objectionable content increased their requests to Facebook to restrict content by 19%, with the most coming from India, Pakistan, and Turkey.

In the report, Facebook details how it’s still fighting what it calls an overly broad search warrant for data about suspects in a disability fraud case. Of the 381 people the goverment requested data about, only 62 were later charged, giving credence to Facebook’s argument that law enforcement overstepped its bounds by asking for data on so many people. Facebook writes that “Despite a setback in the lower court, we’re aggressively pursuing an appeal to a higher court to invalidate these sweeping warrants and to force the government to return the data it has seized.”

[link to techcrunch.com]