India leads in asking Facebook to censor content - Times of India ~ Electronic Gadgets

NEW DELHI: Facebook on late Friday released its second transparency report, detailing the government requests it has received for censoring content and information on users from July 2013 to December 2013. According to the report, India leads in asking the social networking website to censor content. In seeking information on user accounts, India is in the second place behind the US.

In the second half of 2013, Facebook censored 4,765 pieces of content in India at the request of government authorities.

Explaining the nature of content that was censored in India, Facebook said, "We restricted access in India to a number of pieces of content reported primarily by law enforcement officials and the India Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) under local laws prohibiting criticism of a religion or the state."

In the same duration, India also made 3,598 requests, seeking information on 4,711 accounts. Facebook complied with around 5 3% requests. In comparison, the US sought information on 18,715 Facebook accounts. But it did not ask the social networking website to censor any content.

The Facebook report shows that developed countries made fewer requests. In fact, after the US and India, United Kingdom and Italy are the only two countries that have made requests to seek information on more than 2,000 Facebook accounts. In the second half of 2013, Italy sought information on 2,613 accounts while the UK asked for information on 2,277 accounts.

Among developing countries, Brazil sought information on 1,651 accounts. Closer home, Pakistan sought information on 163 accounts while Sri Lanka made only three requests, seeking details of three Facebook accounts.

When it comes to censuring content, most of the developed countries had no objection with stuff Facebook users were posting. France and Germany, two countries that take neo-Nazi content very seriously, made some requests for censoring c ontent. France asked Facebook to censor 80 pieces of content while Germany made 84 such requests.

But Turkey, a country where the government recently banned Twitter and YouTube, was quite active in monitoring Facebook content. It asked the social networking website to remove 2014 pieces of content in the second half of 2013. In the same duration, Pakistan asked Facebook to censor 162 pieces of content.

In India, Facebook has over 100 million users. Only the US has higher number of Facebook users. The website is not available in China.

"People around the world want to understand the nature and extent of government requests services like Facebook receive, and how companies respond to them," Colin Stretch, Facebook counsel, said on the official blog. "Today we are releasing our second Government Requests Report. We have expanded on our first report to include information not only about government requests for account information, but also about government requ ests to restrict or remove content from our service on the grounds that it violates local law."

Stretch adds that when Facebook gets a government request, the company follows a proper procedure before deciding whether to act on the request or ignore it. "We review (request) with care, and, even where we conclude that it is legally sufficient, we only restrict access to content in the requesting country," said Stretch. "We take a similar approach to government requests for account information."

Stretch said that even when Facebook complies with the government requests it tries to share only the basic information. "When we are required to provide information, in most instances we share basic information only - such as name and IP address," he said.

Almost all major technology companies dealing in user-generated content publish "transparency reports", highlighting the government request for data. Some companies like Yahoo, which did not use to provide it earli er, started publishing these reports after the revelations by Edward Snowden that alleged the technology companies had a close relationship with National Security Agency, a spy agency, in the US. Companies named in the leaked NSA documents denied allegations.

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