In a biannual report, Facebook said government requests for account data increased by 13 per cent, from 41,214 requests to 46,763.
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This was the first time Facebook has included details on non-disclosure orders since it started issuing the global requests reports in 2013.
“We scrutinize each request for user data we receive for legal sufficiency, no matter which country is making the request”, Sonderby wrote.
In a statement, Facebook said it supported the Email Privacy Act which became law in the United States on Thursday and puts the requirement for security services to produce a warrant in exchange for content on a legal footing.
The details come as the technology industry is embroiled in debate on how governments should gain access to user data, and how the requests should be disclosed to users and the public. The number of items restricted for violating local law increased over the first half of 2015 to 55,827, up from 20,568.
The UK government made 4,190 requests for user data (covering 5,478 accounts) in the latter half of 2015 and Facebook complied with 3,442 (82.15 per cent) of these requests. This gets even more disturbing knowing that India makes it to the top three contenders for maximum content removal for the third consecutive year in a row. United States and India lead the dubious list of governments with the most number of requests.
While Pakistan sent 471 requests to Facebook asking for information of 706 accounts.
While Facebook restricted a total of 37,695 requests in France, 32,100 of these were “instances of a single image related to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris”. The number may not seem much, but has rose exponentially from its Preceding period Jan-June 2015, during which only 192 requests were made by the government, seeking information for 275 users.
While there are restrictions that limit exactly what Facebook is able to include in the report, this edition includes a number of case studies to help illustrate the figures.
“We restricted access in India to categories of content in response to legal requests from government agencies, including law enforcement agencies”, Facebook said on its website.
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But the company stressed it does not provide governments with so-called back doors to allow them direct access to personal data or message content. Facebook has about 1.59 billion monthly active users as of December 2015.
