India govt fourth largest requestor of information globally: Twitter

At 9 percent of the overall global request, the India government was the fourth largest requester of information from Twitter between July-December 2019, the microblogging platform has said in its latest transparency report. India had placed a total of 3,264 information requests, accounting for 4 percent of the 73,658 global information requests Twitter received between July-December 2019. 

Key Highlights

• India’s requests comprised 2,415 routine (38,835 worldwide), 369 emergencies (9,870 worldwide) and 480 combined (24,953 worldwide). There were 2,700 legal demands, Twitter revealed. The report captures data between July -December 2019 on matters such as Twitter’s rules enforcement statistics, legal demands on content removal made by countries to the platform, copyright takedown notices, and account information requests received from government, law enforcement agencies and third parties.
  
• While the US was the single largest source of government requests, it now accounts for only 26 per cent of the global volume, down from 80 per cent in 2012. The US is followed by Japan (22 per cent) and France (12 per cent).
  
• France, India, South Korea (5 percent), Turkey (5 percent), the United Kingdom (5 percent), and Germany (4 percent) together account for 40 per cent of all global information requests, and 32 per cent of all global accounts specified, Twitter added.
  
• Global governments and law enforcement agencies submitted approximately 21 per cent more information requests (combined emergency and routine requests) compared to the previous reporting period.
  
• India has also fared ‘well’ when it comes to the number of removal requests. It was the fifth largest ‘requestor’ among countries for removing content on Twitter and Periscope based on local laws.
  
• Twitter received 27,538 legal demands to remove content specifying 98,595 accounts. “This is the largest number of requests and specified accounts that we’ve received since releasing our first transparency report in 2012. We withheld or otherwise removed some or all of the reported content in response to 35 percent of these global legal demands,” the company said in its report.
  
• It noted that 86 percent of the total global volume of legal demands originated from Japan, Russia and Turkey. 
  
• Emergency requests accounted for roughly one out of every five global information requests submitted to Twitter. Emergency requests increased by 26 per cent during this reporting period, while the aggregate number of accounts specified in these requests increased by 32 per cent. The US submitted the highest volume of global emergency requests (27 per cent), followed by South Korea (19 per cent), and Japan (16 per cent).

SOURCE:The Week

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