RE: FACEBOOK’S “GLOBAL GOVERNMENT REQUESTS REPORT” According to today’s (1/9/13) Sunday Standard: “Botswana in international row over state surveillance and spying.” Really, how is that? How can a Facebook company report that Botswana institution(s) made 3 requests for information, affecting a total of 7 users, which were turned down, constitute a headline international incident? If so there are plenty of such incidents to go around. According to Facebook’s “Global Government Requests Report” [not “Transparency Report” as Sunday Standard call it] since January 2013 a total of 74 countries made requests on accounts of about 38,000 users, with most requests from most countries having been turned down, including all 30 requests out of Africa. Other countries whose requests were turned down include Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland etc. For the curious, the document in question is easily accessible @ facebook/about/government_requests. According to the report, over half of all requests, i.e. on 20-21,000 users, were made by the US government, 79% of which were honoured. Interestingly the USA is the only country in which exact figures are not provided by Facebook, whose explanation for this is: “We have reported the numbers for all criminal and national security requests to the maximum extent permitted by [US] law. We continue to push the United States government to allow more transparency regarding these requests, including specific numbers and types of national security-related requests. We will publish updated information for the United States as soon as we obtain legal authorisation to do so.” In other words, by its own admission, Facebook is not free to freely report on official USA requests, a fact which goes someway to explain why this week’s report was dismissed by many in the global media as mere window dressing. Why would any Government make a request to Facebook? Again, according to the Report: “Governments make requests to Facebook and many other companies seeking account information in official investigations., The vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings. In many of these cases, these government requests seek basic subscriber information, such as name and length of service.” Why would we not wish to comment further? If a request has indeed been made in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation, it would by its very nature be privileged information here as well as in virtually any other jurisdiction.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 09:52:22 +0000