The Bangladesh government has made seven requests to Facebook seeking data from January to June this year of 17 accounts on the globally top-ranked social media website.
It was found in the statistics that the Facebook authorities revealed recently.
However, they did not respond to any of the requests.
In its Government Requests Report, Facebook said: “We respond to valid requests relating to criminal cases. Each and every request we receive is checked for legal sufficiency and we reject or require greater specificity on requests that are overly broad or vague.”
In this report Facebook provided the country-wise statistics of the governments’ requests and their responses.
According to Facebook, neighbouring country India made 4,559 requests seeking data on 5,958 users, in which case the company responded to 50.87% of the requests made by the Indian government.
It also said Facebook restricted access in India to a number of contents reported primarily by law enforcement officials and the India Computer Emergency Response Team under local laws prohibiting criticism of a religion or the state.
Upon requests, 4,960 pieces of content were restricted, the report shows.
United States made 15,433 law enforcement requests for data of 23,667 users/accounts, 80.15% of which were duly responded. Facebook responded to 71.68% of 2,110 requests by the UK for 2,619 accounts.
Facebook Inc said requests by governments for user information rose by about a quarter in the first half of 2014 over the second half of last year.
In the first six months of 2014, governments around the world made 34,946 requests for data. During the same time, the amount of content restricted because of local laws increased by about 19%.
“We are aggressively pursuing an appeal to a higher court to invalidate these sweeping warrants and to force the government to return the data it has seized,” the company said in a company blog post on Tuesday.
Google Inc reported in September a 15% sequential increase in the number of requests in the first half of this year, and a 150% rise in the last five years, from governments around the world to reveal user information in criminal investigations.
Krishna Pada Roy, deputy commissioner at the Detective Branch of police, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that the DB often make such requests to Facebook for information.
However, when asked about the information request for the aforementioned 17 users, the deputy commissioner said he could not say anything about the requests immediately and would need to look into the matter.
