In a blog post accompanying the company’s third such report, Facebook said that it doesn’t accept every single request for user data or request to restrict content.
“As we’ve said before, we scrutinize every government request we receive for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests,” Chris Sonderby, deputy general counsel at Facebook, wrote.
The company also disclosed the number of requests related to national security received by the U.S. government.
The data closed is only available in broad ranges, thanks to government restrictions on companies’ transparency. For example, between Jan. 1 and June 30, Facebook received between 0 and 999 National Security Letters (NSLs); the company is not permitted to disclose the precise number. There is no data in this report about NSA-related requests, technically referred to as Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests, since Facebook is required to wait six months before releasing such data.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
