Facebook is hopping on the foil train by releasingits first - ever transparency reportthis dawn . Covering 74 commonwealth and detailing over 38,000 government postulation for data , the document shed some light on how Facebook function with governments . Some , but not much .
While there ’s a taradiddle behind every country ’s figure , the biggest one is about the United States , which claimed a upstanding half of all the government petition . In the first six calendar month of 2013 , U.S. government agent made between 11,000 and 12,000 requests for data point on 20,000 to 21,000 different users . This occult the number of asking from India ’s political science , which claimed the second - high-pitched amount with 3,245 requests on 4,144 users .
You need to look no further than simple universe and user numbers to excuse the fact that the U.S. and India are the top two area . The U.S. and Indiahave the most people on Facebook , so of course there ’s more activity there . The larger phone number in the United States is also consistent with transparence reports from companies likeGoogleandTwitter . Thoughas the Associated Press points out , “ The [ U.S. ] telephone number are imprecise because the federal authorities forbids companies from let on how many times they ’ve been ordered to turn over selective information about their client . ”
It ’s hard to look at these numbers and not think about the NSA . Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in June showed the world how intimately the NSA influence with technology caller to collect information on both foreign and American citizens as a part of U.S. counterterrorism effort . Mark Zuckerbergdenied giving the NSA “ unmediated access”to its host , despite grounds to the contrary , and just last calendar week , it was reported that Facebook accepted compensation from NSA for its efforts in cooperating with the programme . To thatFacebook saidit “ never receive any compensation in connexion with responding to a government activity data asking . ” But who knows what ’s in reality true in the he - said - she - said madness .
https://gizmodo.com/confirmed-nsa-paid-google-microsoft-others-millions-1188615332
What we do know is that Facebook is sample very hard to show how they ’re force back against Big Brother . Wrote Colin Stretch , Facebook ’s General Counsel , in a web log post :
We scrutinize each request for effectual sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law , and ask a elaborated verbal description of the effectual and factual stem for each request . We fight many of these postulation , pushing back when we find legal want and narrow down the scope of to a fault tolerant or vague requests . When we are postulate to comply with a exceptional asking , we ofttimes partake in only canonic user information , such as name .
So how ’s that for transparency ? Pretty unsatisfying , huh ? Well , give Facebook a break . This is their first time out , if you do n’t weigh the decade they ’ve been receiving these asking and just have n’t bothered to share them . [ AP , Facebook ]
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