U.S. Authorities Like Facebook's User Data

According to Facebook's latest transparency report, government requests for the company's user data increased 24% in the first half of 2014. Governments around the world made 34,946 requests for user information between January and June, up from 28,147 in the second half of 2013.

Once again, U.S. authorities were particularly keen on Facebook's data, accounting for 44% of all requests. Interestingly, the percentage of requests where at least some data was produced was very high for U.S. government requests. Facebook produced data in more than 80% of the cases, compared to 51% for second-ranked India and just 34% for Germany, which made the third most requests.

In the press release, Facebook emphasized that each request would be carefully scrutinized before any data is produced and that the company would push back whenever deficiencies are found or requests are excessively broad.