More governments request account info from Twitter

Twitter released a new transparency report on Thursday showing a steady rise in government requests for information from the globally popular one-to-many messaging service. The number of requests for information from governments climbed 46 per cent from the second half of last year to 2,058, according to Twitter. The San Francisco-based firm said it received requests for account information from a total of 54 countries, but that the bulk of the demands came from the United States. The U.S. accounted for 1,257 of the requests for information. Japan and Saudi Arabia also stood out in the report, requesting information 192 times and 189 times, respectively.

The continued rise may be attributed to Twitter’s ongoing international expansion, but also appears to follow the industry trend. As always, we continue to fight to provide notice to affected users when we’re not otherwise prohibited.

Twitter report

Twitter lamented that, despite talks with the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it remained barred from providing insights regarding requests in the form of national security letters that must be kept secret due to the law.

National security requests aside, our new report shows a steady increase in global requests for account information, content removal, and copyright takedowns.

Twitter report

World twitter transparency