Facebook launched yesterday its “Global Government Requests Report,” a chart laying out how often various countries order Facebook to give up data about a user and how many of those requests are honoured. Overall, at least 25,607 orders were put in for 37,954 separate accounts in the first six months of this year, with nearly half of them coming from the United States. According to the report, the Romanian authorities made 16 requests on 36 users, Facebook having the legal obligation to grant information in 63 per cent of them. Besides the US, which made between 11,000 and 12,000 requests on 20,000 – 21,000 users, only five countries asked for information on over 1,000 users: France, Italy, India, Germany, and the UK. Of those, France and Germany saw about 40 percent of their requests granted, while India and Italy got about half granted. The UK saw nearly 70 percent approved at least in part.
