Twitter Report Reveals Another Jump In User Data Requests

Twitter has reported yet another rise in the number of requests for users’ private data it receives, with the US still far and away the hungriest for information.

Between 1 January and 30 June, Twitter was sent 1,157 requests, up from 849 across the same months in 2012. The US made 902 of the requests in the first half of this year, affecting 1,319 users. In almost seven out of 10 cases, US officials received the data they asked for.

Japan was the second most keen nation, with 87, whilst the UK was third on 26.

‘Give us your tweeters, Twitter’

“Since the inception of our Transparency Report in July 2012, we have received inquiries from a total of 35 different governments,” Twitter said in its report.

“From January – June 2013, we received requests from 26 different governments, with an increase of ~15 percent since July – December 2012.”

Twitter said in a blog post it was keen to include data on orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has been at the centre of the controversy caused by leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. But it is still not permitted to do so, despite an outcry from various technology firms, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

“We believe it’s important to be able to publish numbers of national security requests – including FISA  [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] disclosures – separately from non-secret requests. Unfortunately, we are still not able to include such metrics,” the company said.

Content removal requests also rose, from just six in the first half of 2012 to 60 this year. And copyright notices shot up too, from 3,378 to 5,753, having dipped to 3,268 in the second half of 2012.

Remove Your Media, a company that works with film studios, record companies and games makers to get illegally-shared copyrighted material taken offline, put in the most takedown requests with 696.

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