[Mhiz Rebecca]

Governments are demanding more and more data from
Facebook about its users.
On Wednesday, the social network said that government
requests for user account data rose 27% in the first half of
2016 compared to the second half of last year.
And that H2 2015 figure was already up 13% on the first half
of 2015.
In the most recent report, US law enforcement agencies
topped the list as being most demanding.
Globally, government requests for account data globally rose
to 59,229 from 46,710 — and more than half contained a non-
disclosure order that prohibited the social networking website
from notifying users.
However, requests for “content restriction,” when an item or
post is restricted for violating local laws, decreased by 83
percent from the second half of 2015, Facebook. Why?
Because the Paris terror attacks in November 2016 caused a
sudden, abnormal spike, all centered around a single image
from the attacks, Facebook deputy general counsel Chris
Sonderby wrote in a blog post.
For the first time, Facebook also provided information about
government requests to preserve relevant user account
information. The company received 38,675 preservation
requests for 67,129 accounts, it said.
“We apply a rigorous approach to every government request
we receive to protect the information of the people who use
our services. We scrutinize each request for legal sufficiency,
no matter which country is making the request, and challenge
those that are deficient or overly broad,” Sonderby wrote in
the blog post.
“We do not provide governments with ‘back doors’ or direct
access to people’s information. We’ll also keep working with
partners in industry and civil society to push governments
around the world to reform surveillance in a way that protects
their citizens’ safety and security while respecting their rights
and freedoms.”