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Alarming! Facebook data requests by Indian government are growing each year

  • Facebook has released its latest transparency report revealing data requests made by government agencies.
  • India stands second in the list of countries, only after the US, with over 6000 requests made. 
  • The global as well as trend back at home hints at an exponential rise. 
Facebook data requests
Author
First Published Dec 26, 2016, 5:22 AM IST

Facebook has released its bi-annual report that reveals details about data requests made by government agencies. The latest report for the period between January 2016 and June 2016 shows India take the second spot - 6324 requests made for 8290 accounts/users  - in the list of countries whose government asked Facebook to produce user data.

 

Needless to say, the US takes the first spot with 23,854 requests made for 38,951 accounts during the period of January to June this year. While the gap between India and the US seems too large, we wouldn’t be surprised to see it narrow down year after year.

 

You can expect an upward trend

If you look at the bigger picture, government requests for account data has increased by 27 percent globally compared to the same time last year 2015. This increase from 46,710 to 59,229 requests shows a trend that is only bound to grow. It should be noted that Facebook started releasing data requests made by the government a couple of year back in 2013.

 

A closer look at the India figures and the story isn’t any different. During the period of July 2015 to December 2015, 5561 data requests were made for 7081 accounts, out of which for 50.87 percent of the requests made some data was produced. During the first half of the same year, 5115 requests were made for 6268 accounts, and data was produced for 45 percent of the requests made. In second half of 2014, 5473 requests were made for 7281 accounts, which means the first of 2015 saw a slight drop. In the first half 4559 data requests were made for 5958 accounts.

 

The numbers, except the trend during early 2015 that shows a slight drop, the data requests made by government agencies have been growing exponentially.  In the digital era, with our businesses and essentially our lives going online, it is only bound to increase in the future.

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