Facebook received 27 percent more government requests for information in 2016

Facebook has released its Global Government Requests Report for H1 2016, and it shows that there has been a significant increase in the number of government requests for account data. Compared to the first half of 2015, Facebook received 27 percent more requests globally. Most of these 59,229 requests came from the US government, and more than half of them (56 percent) included a gagging order preventing Facebook from notifying the affected users. Request for "content restriction" due to local law violations dropped dramatically -- down a massive 83 percent from 55,827 to 9,663. All is not as it seems here, however.… [Continue Reading]