US government wants your Facebook data -- without you knowing
Facebook's latest "Global Government Requests Report" shows a leap in filings worldwide. In the US at least, most of those requests come with a gag order.
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The government wants to get more and more information out of Facebook, but they don't want you to know about it.
The social network's latest "Global Government Requests Report," released Thursday, documented a 13 percent rise in government requests for Facebook user data in the second half of 2015 over the previous period. In total, governments asked for Facebook user data a total of 46,763 times in the last six months of 2015.
The report also shed light on government gag orders, with Facebook revealing that 60 percent of requests from US authorities came with a "non-disclosure order" prohibiting Facebook from notifying the user in question.
Facebook also receives requests to block material for violating local laws in particular countries. One photo related to the November 2015 Paris terror attacks was subject to more than 32,000 block requests from the French government.
Facebook said in a statement it doesn't provide "back doors or direct access to people's data." The company added: "We scrutinize each request for user data we receive for legal sufficiency, no matter which country is making the request. If a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back hard and will fight in court, if necessary."