Government requests for Twitter users’ data on the rise

The Turkish government has requested fewer than 10 users’ information, but Twitter has not yet produced any information, according to the report. DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINIŞIK

Twitter is under increasing pressure from governments around the world to release users’ private information, with requests rising 40 percent in the first six months of the year, the microblogging site said July 31 in its semi-annual transparency report.

The United States made three-quarters of the 1,157 data requests during the six-month period, according to the San Francisco-based company’s report. Governments usually want the emails or IP addresses tied to a Twitter account.

The United Kingdom is the third country after the U.S. and Japan in the list with 26 data requests. Twitter is also on the agenda in the U.K. due to a police investigation, with British police investigating bomb threats made on the microblogging site against several female journalists, including Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman, Independent columnist Grace Dent and Time magazine’s Catherine Mayer.

In one well-known case, a French court ordered Twitter in February to turn over information about an anonymous account that posted anti-Semitic tweets. Twitter, which had initially resisted by arguing that the data was stored beyond French jurisdiction in its California servers, ultimately complied in June.

Efforts to censor Twitter content have also risen sharply, the company said. “Over the last six months, we have gone from withholding content in two countries to withholding content [ranging from hate speech to defamation] in seven countries,” said Twitter legal policy manager Jeremy Kessel. Twitter was censored the most in Brazil, where courts issued orders on nine occasions to remove a total of 39 defamatory tweets.

Turkey’s requests

The Turkish government has requested fewer than 10 users’ information, but Twitter has not yet produced any information, according to the report. Turkey has requested the closure of seven accounts, three of which are based on a court order while the other four are based on a government agency, police or other institution. The Turkish government specified 30 username or accounts in the requests. Turkish officials have been in contact with Twitter representatives to change laws, presented by the company as preconditions to the opening of an office in Turkey. Officials said last week they were working on changes to certain laws that paved the way for prison sentences for Twitter representatives over material posted on the site.

The report did not include secret information requests within the U.S. authorized under the Patriot Act, a law enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. companies are prohibited from acknowledging the existence of data requests made under those statutes.

Transparency reports such as the one published semi-annually by Twitter have been a particularly contentious issue in Silicon Valley in the wake of a series of leaks in June by former security contractor Edward Snowden, who alleged that major service providers including Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. systematically pass along huge troves of user data to the National Security Agency (NSA).