Facebook gov surveillance data kept locked inside, er, Facebook Facebook has released its first government transparency report, revealing – unsurprisingly – that once again India, the US and Blighty were the countries whose police were most likely to snoop on our online activities. Ironically, anyone wishing to actually access the data, at the time of writing, needs a Facebook ID first. …
No, FB got permission to publish aggregate numbers (to the nearest thousand) including those FISA requests. Google hasn't yet because they want to publish the number broken out separately from other requests. But it would still be illegal for them to knowingly publish wrong numbers - if they couldn't publish accurate (if imprecise) statistics, they wouldn't publish any at all.
Interesting, but slightly more meaningful if combined with demographic data,, e.g. the top ten requestors per 100,000 head of population are:
Malta 23.7 accounts requested per 100,000 head of population
United States 6.5
Italy 3.8
United Kingdom 3.7
New Zealand 2.8
Australia 2.7
Germany 2.5
France 2.4
Singapore 2.2
Chile 2.0
Similarly, the top ten requestors per 100,000 Facebook accounts/users are:
Malta 44.7 accounts requested per 100,000 Facebook users/accounts
Cameroon 38.9
United States 12.3
Italy 9.9
Germany 8.2
United Kingdom 7.0
India 6.6
France 6.2
New Zealand 5.3
Useless stats, of the per 100k of population you'd be surprised how many toddlers can't use electronic devices. Under 13's (the bulk of the population in poorer countries) aren't even meant to have facebook accounts, assuming that they have access to internet in the first place.
More useful would have been be what proportion of internet users (or better still facebook users) have had their data requested by a government agency.
India has an internet penetration of just 13% (152m) whereas the UK's is 87% (54m users).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users)
"More useful would have been be what proportion of internet users (or better still facebook users) have had their data requested by a government agency."
What, like the second half of my post above, where I said "Similarly, the top ten requestors per 100,000 Facebook accounts/users are:...." ?
In future I suggest you read the entire post before flaming it, otherwise you just end up looking stupid.
El Reg can't do that. Their eager and productive reporters shun Facebook completely to spend time getting to the heart of all things electronic for you and yours. They don't waste time LOL'ing and planning their weekend online. They work diligently, with pride and a sense of excellence.
Stout hearts of English oak exist in every El Reg reporter. Well, except those from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, of course. ;)
As we have made clear in recent weeks, we have stringent processes in place to handle all government data requests. We believe this process protects the data of the people who use our service blah blah blah.
And how stringent are the rules governing access to data requests from paying customers?
They do have FAQ and guidelines pages linked from the report which almost answer your (and my) thoughts. However, in my rough paraphrase, FB does their level best, honest, to scrutinize every single one of the ~30k account requests (over six months) for legal liability, and we reserve the right to do as we please to the extent we don't anger any clients, er, governments. Oh, and we may charge you shipping and handling fees, or not, depends on how we feel we can get away with.
Hm, I was able to access the page without logging in to FB. Wonder why El Reg claimed otherwise.
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