In only a six month period, Facebook has received 38,000 requests from governments around the world, with half of those coming from
U.S. agencies:
Government agents in 74 countries demanded information on about 38,000 Facebook users in the first half of this year, with about half the orders coming from authorities in the United States, the company said Tuesday.
Each request can include more than one account:
In June in response to NSA data mining revelation, Facebook said that in the six-month period, ending on Dec. 31, 2012, it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for data from local, state and federal government agencies. Of those requests, data from 18,000 to 19,000 Facebook accounts were requested.
Collin Stretch, Facebook General Counsel had this to say:
"We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests," Colin Stretch, Facebook's general counsel company said in a blog post. "When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name."
From the Facebook blog:
Transparency and trust are core values at Facebook. We strive to embody them in all aspects of our services, including our approach to responding to government data requests. We want to make sure that the people who use our service understand the nature and extent of the requests we receive and the strict policies and processes we have in place to handle them.
We are pleased to release our first Global Government Requests Report, which details the following:
Which countries requested information from Facebook about our users
The number of requests received from each of those countries
The number of users/user accounts specified in those requests
The percentage of these requests in which we were required by law to disclose at least some data
The report covers the first 6 months of 2013, ending June 30.
You can read Facebook's entire Global Government Requests Report
here.