Twitter sees a big increase in account info requests
Law enforcement agencies are making social media part of more and more investigations these days, based on Twitter's latest transparency report. Between January 1st and June 30th this year, the company saw a 52 percent increase in account information requests (affecting 78 percent more Twitter, Vine and Periscope users) compared to the second half of 2014. Majority (56 percent, to be precise) of those came from the US, followed by Japan, Turkey and the UK, and only 12 percent came from non-government parties. Out of the 4,363 total number of requests, the microblogging website complied and provided info for 58 percent of them.
In addition to more instances of account info scrutiny, the transparency report also revealed that the company received 26 percent more removal requests this period compared to June to December 2014. Twitter got 442 court orders and 561 more takedown requests from government agencies, most of which came from Turkey and Russia. Many of these notices were filed based on defamation and violation of personal rights, but Twitter filed legal objections when it could and tried not to comply with the ones that limit free speech.
The social network's latest report also includes less interesting details like email privacy practices and trademark notices, which you can read on the same transparency portal. But if you'd rather get your hands on those juicy government takedown memos, you can check out Chilling Effects, where the company continues to upload them where the public can see. Just do a search for "Twitter," and you'll get quite a number of results.
