Facebook has announced that world governments are increasingly asking for information about its users.
With the increase, in the second half of 2014, there were a total of 35,051 requests from international governments, up from the 34,946 requests made to the company in the first half of 2014.
"Overall, we continue to see an increase in government requests for data and content restrictions," said Facebook in a blog post. "The amount of content restricted for violating local law increased by 11 percent over the previous half, to 9,707 pieces of content restricted, up from 8,774. We saw a rise in content restriction requests from countries like Turkey and Russia, and declines in places like Pakistan."
Requests from the U.S. government make up a little under half of those requests, with a total of 14,274 being sent to Facebook from the U.S. government. This is a slight decrease since the first half of 2014. Facebook complied with the vast majority of those requests, handing over user data 79 percent of the time. Most commonly requests were of a search warrant or a subpoena.
Facebook is not allowed to share the exact number of national security requests; however, it did say that it received between zero and 999 such requests. These requests include National Security Letters and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests.
Facebook is one of many Internet companies that publish government transparency reports on a regular basis. Twitter is another of those companies, having published a transparency report last month, which revealed a whopping 40 percent increase in data requests from governments around the world. Facebook, however, is a bigger target for governments because of the amount of personal data that is stored on the servers of the company.
"We publish this information because we want people to know the extent and nature of the requests we receive from governments and the policies we have in place to process them," continued Facebook in its blog post. "Moving forward, we will continue to scrutinize each government request and push back when we find deficiencies."
Facebook also offered more information about the types of posts that it allows and the types that it bans on Facebook. The social media company emphasized that it bans posts that do not comply with local laws, and that it encourages respectful behavior on its website. It also said that it aimed to keep users safe and encourage the protection of intellectual property.
