India Second Only to the US in Requesting Facebook for Users Data

The Indian government was second to the US in requesting Facebook for access to users' data in the first six months of this year -- an increase of nearly 37 percent from the second half (July-December period) last year. The Indian government sent Facebook 22,684 queries about users in the above mentioned period and the social networking giant provided data in 54 percent of the request, according to Facebook's Transparency Report.

The US government sent Facebook total 50,741 requests about users' data in the same period.

Globally, in the first half of 2019, government requests for user data increased by 16 percent from 110,634 to 128,617.

"Of the total volume, the US continues to submit the largest number of requests, followed by India, the UK, Germany and France," said Chris Sonderby, VP & Deputy General Counsel, said in a statement on Thursday.

In the US, Facebook received 50,741 requests, representing an increase of 23 percent more requests than last half, which is consistent with trends over time.

"We always scrutinise every government request we receive for account data to make sure it is legally valid. This is true no matter which government makes the request.

"If a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back, and will fight in court, if necessary. We do not provide governments with a back doors' to people's information," said Sonderby.

During the reporting period, the volume of content restrictions based on local law decreased globally by 50 percent from 35,972 to 17,807.

"This decrease follows an unusual spike last half in which we restricted 16,600 items in India based on a Delhi High Court order. Of the total volume, 58 percent of restrictions originated from Pakistan and Mexico," said Facebook.

The company also identified 67 disruptions of Facebook services in 15 countries, compared to 53 disruptions in nine countries in the second half of 2018.

"During this reporting period, we took down 3,234,393 pieces of content based on 568,836 copyright reports, 255,222 pieces of content based on 96,501 trademark reports and 821,727 pieces of content based on 101,582 counterfeit reports," informed Facebook.