Twitter, U.S. government square off yet again

Twitter, U.S. government square off yet again

The social media platform has seen a significant increase in requests from foreign sources.

Twitter’s latest transparency report shows a steady rise in government requests for account information. And an increasing number of requests are coming from foreign governments. In the past six months, the company received more than 2,000 different requests from 54 different countries, an increase of almost 150 percent since Twitter began releasing the data in 2012.

The government requests for information are most often related to criminal investigations being performed by national governments or their agencies. However, the microblogging platform also reports that most requests are not fulfilled. In the first six months of 2014, only 52 percent of the overall requests have led to an information release. This is a 10 percent drop over the last two years.

While more requests are beginning to come from foreign countries, the United States still submits the majority of requests from the social media platform. However, requests from other nations have risen sharply. Turkey, Brazil and Spain have doubled their requests since just last year. But, the most recent report shows that while Twitter has provided information for over 70 percent of the U.S.’s requests, only 39 percent of Brazil’s 77 requests, 12 percent of Spain’s 43 requests, and none of Turkey’s 24 requests have been met.

Twitter published its first report on Jul. 4, 2012, and has continued to release the report every six months. The company was following similar reporting from Google, which made company data on copyright complaints available to the public. Twitter representatives stated that making the requests for information public was a reminder of the importance of corporate and government accountability.

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