Twitter warns of the growth of requests for data from its users by governments

Aug. 1 (Portaltic/EP) –

Twitter has announced that it has seen record levels of requests for information from its user base — including anonymous, journalists and media outlets — from governments around the world.

The company has released its 20th transparency report, detailing the posting removal requests it has facilitated. during the six months corresponding to the second half of 2021.

The company has highlighted that this new report “comes at a time when government requests for account information continually hit new records, including lawsuits to reveal the identity of the owners of anonymous accounts”.

Among the highlights of this analysis, Twitter acknowledges that it continues to “see a worrying trend toward attempts to limit global press freedom,” as government lawsuits targeting journalists and other anonymous users have increased.

This record number reaches 47,572 claims on 198,931 accounts and an increase in the number of legal complaints by governments directed at authorized journalists and media outlets since the last reporting period.

The country that has registered the highest number of requests is the United States, which represented 20 percent of all the demands globally, whether they were information professionals or anonymous people.

This would indicate that this country sent one out of every five requests. It is followed by countries such as India, Japan or France, with 2,000 lawsuits issued (17 percent of the total), while Germany takes some distance, ranking fifth with 634 applications (6%).

In fact, Twitter has advanced that it opposed 29 requests issued by civilians in this country to access information from other anonymous user accounts with the aim of unmasking their identity in the United States.

In this sense, Twitter has recalled that did not share this information with the plaintiffs to protect the First Amendment rights of such users.

Likewise, it has stressed that it does not report in this report on other requests that are considered related to national security processes due to the limitations imposed by the United States Government.

Another section of this extensive report refers to the lawsuits filed to access the data and information of accounts of verified media and journalists.

In total, from July to December 2021, Twitter recorded that 349 accounts of information and media professionals located around the world were subject to 326 lawsuits to remove some of its content.

According to the company, this implies an increase of 103 percent in the number of reported accounts, taking into account the immediately previous period, that is, from January to June 2021.

In this sense, Twitter has highlighted that the majority of requests addressed to the communication industry came from India, with 114 registered demands. It is closely followed by countries like Turkey (78) and Russia (55).