Twitter Says Account Information Requests From India Jumped in H2 2018

The Indian government made information requests for 422 Twitter accounts in the July-December 2018 period while law enforcement agencies in the country asked the micro-blogging platform to remove 667 accounts for violating the law of the land - a massive jump from 237 accounts in the previous reporting period.

The government had made information requests for 355 Twitter accounts in the previous January-June 2018 period.

According to Twitter's 14th biannual Transparency Report released late Thursday, the company provided some information to the Indian government in 18 percent of cases.

In the case of 667 account removal requests, Twitter complied with 2 percent of them.

There were 49 emergency disclosure requests from the Indian government and Twitter produced information in 10 percent of the cases.

The Indian government asked Twitter to preserve information for 100 accounts and Twitter specified 30 such accounts.

"Upon receipt of a valid preservation request, we will temporarily preserve, but not disclose, a snapshot of the relevant account information for 90 days pending issuance and service of valid legal process," said Twitter.

The company this time received government information requests from 86 different countries.

The US now comprises only 30 percent of global government information requests and 35 per cent of all global accounts specified in the same category.

The second highest volume of information requests were submitted by Japan (24 percent of global information requests, comprising 20 percent of global accounts specified).

Requests from the United Kingdom (13 percent), India (6 percent), Germany (6 percent), and France (5 percent) together account for 30 percent of all global information requests, and 29 percent of all global accounts specified.

"We received roughly 8 percent fewer global legal requests to remove content, impacting approximately 2 percent fewer accounts, compared to the previous reporting period. However, there was an 84 percent increase year-over-year between 2017 and 2018," said Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead at Twitter.