Facebook restricted access to
1,228 pieces of content requested by law enforcement agencies and the
India Computer Emergency Response Team within the Ministry of
Electronics and Information Technology
The Indian government requested Facebook for data 9,853 times in the
first half of 2017 - up from 6,324 times in the first half of 2016 -
Facebook's latest 'Government Requests Report' revealed on Tuesday.
Facebook
restricted access to 1,228 pieces of content "in response to legal
requests from law enforcement agencies and the India Computer Emergency
Response Team within the Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology," the company said.
"The majority of content restricted was alleged to
violate local laws relating to defamation of religion and hate speech,"
Facebook said.
The
Indian government and law enforcement agencies also requested for some
information on 13,752 user accounts. Facebook produced "some data" in 54
per cent of the cases in the January-June 2017 period.
In the case of 262 Facebook accounts flagged in the "Emergency"
category from user/account requests, the company produced "some data" in
36 per cent of the cases.
Facebook was down for 21 times in the first half for the Indian users.
"We are aware of disruptions affecting access to Facebook
products and services in India that took place during all six months of
this reporting period. These disruptions were contained to specific
regions," the company said.
"For
the first time, we are expanding the report beyond government requests
to provide data regarding reports from rights holders related to
intellectual property (IP) -- covering copyright, trademark, and
counterfeit," said Chris Sonderby, Deputy General Counsel, Facebook.
In the first half of 2017, Facebook received 224,464 copyright
reports about content on Facebook, 41,854 trademark reports and 14,279
counterfeit reports.
Requests for account data increased by 21 per cent globally compared to the second half of 2016 - from 64,279 to 78,890.
"Fifty-seven
per cent of the data requests we received from law enforcement in the
US contained a non-disclosure order that prohibited us from notifying
the user, up from 50 per cent in our last report," Sonderby said in a
blog post.
Overall, the number of content restrictions for violating local
law increased by 304 per cent globally compared to the second half of
2016 - from 6,944 to 28,036.
"This increase was primarily driven by a request from Mexican law
enforcement to remove instances of a video depicting a school shooting
in Monterrey in January. We restricted access in Mexico to 20,506
instances of the video in the first half of 2017," Facebook added.
There were 52 disruptions of Facebook services in nine countries in the
first half of 2017, compared to 43 disruptions in 20 countries in the
second half of 2016.
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