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Facebook publishes global government requests report
Malta made 89 requests on 97 Facebook users • government agencies around the world requested information on 38,000 accounts.
28 August 2013, 12:00am
Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
2 min read
Maltese authorities made 89 requests to Facebook to access information on 97 accounts, according to the Facebook Global Government Requests report which covers the first half of 2013.
According to the report, the percentage of requests where some data was produced reached 60% in the case of Malta.
By end 2012, there were 217,040 Facebook users in Malta.
The highest number of requests were made by the United States (11,000 - 12,000 on some 21,000 user accounts) followed by India (3,245 requests on 4,144 user accounts) and the United Kingdom (1,975 requests on 2,337 user accounts).
Italy, with 1,705 requests, sought information on 2,306 accounts. Germany filed 1,886 requests to obtain information on 2,068 users while France made 1,547 for 1,598 accounts.
Uganda, Serbia, Russia, Japan, Iceland, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Bulgaria (seeking information on 12 users) and Bangladesh were the only countries to file just one request in six months.
In explaining why it was making this information public, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said Facebook wanted to make sure that users understood the nature and extent of the requests it receives and the strict policies and processes it has in place to handle them.
"As we have made clear in recent weeks, we have stringent processes in place to handle all government data requests," Stretch said.
"We believe this process protects the data of the people who use our service, and requires governments to meet a very high legal bar with each individual request in order to receive any information about any of our users."
Facebook reassured its users that it scrutinised each request for legal sufficiency under its terms and the strict letter of the law, and require a detailed description of the legal and factual bases for each request.
"We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests. When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name," Stretch added.
Facebook said that while it believed that government had an important responsibility to keep people safe, this could be carried out while also being transparent.
"Government transparency and public safety are not mutually exclusive ideals. Each can exist simultaneously in free and open societies, and they help make us stronger," Stretch said.
"We strongly encourage all governments to provide greater transparency about their efforts aimed at keeping the public safe, and we will continue to be aggressive advocates for greater disclosure."
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This is what is purely called : Big Brother" watching! Or more precisely Big brother spying on its' citizens. Except in the case of Malta it is mostly used for political reasons. In the last few weeks Obama and his AG were found out to be spying on some of their citizens with very little explanation. They say it was because of National Security but sometimes I wonder. With all this new technology one cannot be too careful and that is why Facebook might as well be named an Openbook. Don't ever put anything on Facebook that you would not like for everybody to know. If you really relish and appreciate your privacy do not join Facebook.
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As can be seen in another newspaper, the Maltese government made the highest number of requests per number of Facebook users in the country. Why? I don't think we have a particularly over-zealous intelligence service. I think it is just abuse of power to score points in the tit-for-tat bickering of local politics and trying to find out who is behind fake accounts(and once you find something you want out, just leak if to the gossip queen in Bidnija).
