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U.S. Makes Nearly Half Of Government Facebook User Information Requests

MENLO PARK (CBS SF) - The latest Facebook disclosure on how often governments around the world request user information reveals that the United States government does much more snooping into the social network than any other country.

Of the nearly 35,000 requests made governments during the first six moths of the year, 15,433 were made by American authorities, and about 80 percent of the time officials got part or all of the data they were looking for. The breakdown of the U.S. numbers reveals that search warrants and subpoenas were the primary request methods.

Those numbers show an increase from the second half of 2013, when Facebook received a total of 27,230 requests for user information, 12,598 from the United States.

India (4,559 requests), Germany (2,537), France (2,249) and the United Kingdom (2,110) rounded out the top five nations in terms of request volume in the latest numbers. Of those only the United Kingdom at 71 percent had a better than 50-50 chance of getting some of the requested information.

The data reveals that the average success rate among all countries was 34 percent, although those numbers are skewed by countries which made few or no requests.

Facebook reveals the data in an attempt to provide transparency to users. Last month, Twitter sued Department of Justice and the FBI for the right to provide detailed information requests they get.

 

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