Facebook released more than its gloat-worthy earnings report this week. The social network also put out its most recent transparency report, detailing the many occurrences when governments worldwide requested it hand over data on its users.
Facebook's newest Global Government Request Report breaks down government petitions filed with the site over the latter part of 2015. The report also details how many accounts were included across all requests, as well as how many of those requests were the acted upon.
Take downs
The company also detailed how many posts were taken down by authorities in different countries.
One example included blocking 366 pieces of content in Germany that didn't comply with the country's ban on volksverhetzung (incitement of hatred) or Holocaust denial.
Facebook also said that in France, 32,100 of the 37,695 take down cases were for a single photo related to the November 2015 Paris terror attacks, citing French laws "related to protecting human dignity."
The social network reassured the public that it doesn't give governments "backdoor access" to its site, meaning that any information supplied by Facebook to authorities is handled exclusively in-house. (That's not to say that the company doesn't have any backdoors - that fact was discovered recently by a white hat hacker who, thankfully, was working with Facebook to patch up vulnerabilities.)
Facebook's stance on transparency and user security go hand-in-hand. The company says that it "scrutinizes each request for user data... for legal sufficiency" and supports privacy initiatives like the United States' Email Privacy Act, which would require search warrants before law enforcement can ask tech companies to hand over someone's emails.
Facebook has been providing data on government requests since 2013, and data as far back as January 2013 - June 2013 is available to view.
