In the past six months, Twitter says it received 5,600 requests for information on 13,152 accounts around the world – mostly in the form of subpoenas – including more than 2,500 in the US.
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During the same period, Pakistan also made six requests for the information of 22 accounts, while the government made three requests for three accounts specified during the corresponding period past year, reported The Express Tribune, adding that Twitter did not comply with any of the request made by Pakistan, including the court order.
The removal requests were up 13 percent, with the largest volumes coming from Turkey and Russian Federation, which have historically led the pack asking Twitter to get rid of content, according to a transparency report released by the US-based social media firm, however, the report did not detail whether efforts to prevent extremists from using the platform to spread violent messages were a factor in the requests.
Twitter has said it allows both government and business to use the data as long as it is not for “surveillance” purposes. The social network notifies users about request for information about their account unless the company is prohibited from doing so or the request concerns imminent threat to life, terrorism and other emergency exceptions.
Between January and June 2016, the USA government made 2,520 Twitter information requests in relation to 8,009 user accounts – comprising 44 percent of the total requests received by Twitter.
In the US, most requests for information from accounts came from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US Secret Service, and the New York County District Attorney’s Office. There were an additional 761 court orders, according to the report. The company also received 5,195 government requests to remove information from 20,571 accounts, with almost 80 percent of those requests coming from Turkey and Russian Federation. Another thing the transparency report revealed is that governments asked Twitter for 25 Vine and 47 Periscope account information, as well.
That tactic that appears to have become more common in United States government requests for information.
The information is part of Twitter’s transparency report, which it has published since 2012. Twitter attributes that change to a decline in information requests from the United States and Turkey, saying US authorities made 152 fewer requests compared to the second half of 2015, while Turkish requests fell by 34 percent over the same period.
According to TechCrunch, 46 percent of the total requests Twitter gets is typically protected by a gag order, and only 7 percent of affected users are usually notified that the United States government asked for their data.
For the first time, Twitter received a request from Pakistan that was accompanied by a court order. That measure has been met with fierce opposition from privacy and free speech advocates.
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“It’s not enough if we’re going to defeat ISIL just to take out their leadership or to control certain territories, if, in the virtual world, they are consistently reaching kids here in the United States or elsewhere in the world and recruiting them and twisting their minds to do bad things”, Mr. Obama said in a speech at SXSW.
