Turkey and Russia drive rise in Twitter user account information requests
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Version 0 of 1. Government requests for Twitter user account information rose significantly during the second half of 2014, with noticeable increases from Russia and Turkey according to the social network’s latest transparency report. Twitter found that government requests had risen by 40% since its last reporting period which covered the first half of 2014. Requests from Turkey increased by more than 150%, while over the same period Russia, which previously hadn’t submitted any requests to the site, was responsible for 108 requests which all ended in no information being provided. Russia’s rise in requests follows the passage of its new “bloggers law” in August 2014, say Twitter. In the latest bi-annual report, Belize, El Salvador and Kenya join the list of countries, which now totals 58, that Twitter have received inquires from since launching the transparency report in July 2012. The majority of requests for user account information continue to be dominated by the US - it was responsible for 56% of all requests received and saw a 29% increase in the number of requests since the first half of 2014. Turkey, the second largest requester, constituted 12% of all requests, while Japan was the third largest requester and was responsible for 10% of the total requests received. A ban on Twitter was issued in Turkey in March 2014 but was later lifted by Turkish authorities when the ban was deemed to be in breach of freedom of expression by the country’s constitutional court. In addition to the number of worldwide government requests received for account information, the report also shows that Twitter saw an 84% rise in government and government-sanctioned demands to remove content. In total Twitter received 796 requests to remove or withhold content, either via court orders or government agencies and police. Turkey, Russia and Germany were the top three requesting countries, their requests resulted in the withholding of 79 accounts and 1,835 Tweets. Of the total number of tweets that were witheld (1,982), almost all were from Turkey (1,820). Twitter report that since the first half of 2014, the number of removal requests for Turkey increased by 156%, while those by Russia rose by 184%. In total Twitter received 2,871 requests for user account information and some level of information was produced in 52% of these. A total of 796 removal requests were registered in the second half of 2014 and some content was withheld in 13% of these. You can find a complete list by country here. |