Facebook Got 40,300 User Data Requests From Indian Government In H2 2020

On Thursday, the social networking giant Facebook announced that it received almost 40,300 requests from the Indian government for user data of some form during the period between July and December 2020. It claimed that 37,865 of these were legal requests. Furthermore, Facebook said that in 52% of the requests from the government, there was some data produced.

In its latest Transparency Report, Facebook stated that during the six-month period mentioned above, the social network restricted access to content as many as 944 times depending on the government requests and local laws, whatever was applicable. In comparison, this is more as compared to the 824 times it restricted access during the previous period between January and June last year.

Facebook's Claim

In the report, the social networking giant stated that they restricted access in India to 878 items due to the directions they received from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. This was done on the grounds of violating Section 69A of the Information Technology Act 2000. This includes content against the security of the state and public order. Of these blocked items, 10 were restricted temporarily and the access to 54 items was restricted in compliance with the court orders. However, Facebook did not specify any word regarding on whose directions it blocked the content the rest of the 12 times.

Furthermore, it goes on stating that the central and state governments have requested data of 62,754 users or accounts in the second half of 2020. Also, 4,400 requests were for the preservation of data from 8,530 accounts on the social network. The number of requests made in this quarter is claimed to be much higher than the number of requests that were made by the Indian government during the first half of 2020.

Besides the usual requests that are made by both the Indian government and its agencies, Facebook appears to have restricted access to 12 profiles as well as pages. These blocked pages and accounts were said to be the supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Notably, those pages and profiles belong to both India and the world.

Facebook clarified that while they respect the government laws in the countries they operate in, they strongly oppose extraterritorial legal demands including the ones that result in these restrictions. It adds that they actively pursued all options to appeal the order.