Facebook received 6,324 data requests from Indian government in the first half of 2016, according to Facebook’s Government Requests Report. The Indian government agencies sought data for about 8,290 users/accounts, the second highest after the US, which made about 23,850 requests for 38,951 users/accounts during the first half of 2016.
During July-December 2015 period, Indian agencies had made 5,561 data requests to Facebook for 7,018 users/accounts.
According to Facebook Deputy General Counsel Chris Sonderby, government requests for account data globally increased from 46,710 in second half of 2015 to 59,229 in first half of 2016 – a hike of 27%
“As we have previously emphasised, we apply a rigorous approach to every government request we receive to protect the information of the people who use our services. We scrutinise each request for legal sufficiency, no matter which country is making the request, and challenge those that are deficient or overly broad,” Sonderby added.
He however highlighted that Facebook is not providing “back doors” to governments or direct access to users’ information.
“We’ll also keep working with partners in industry and civil society to push governments around the world to reform surveillance in a way that protects their citizens’ safety and security while respecting their rights and freedoms,” he said.
Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, U.S., is the largest social networking website in the world. The Facebook website was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students Andrew McCollum, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz. Initially, the websites membership was limited to Harvard students, but it was later expanded to include higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Since 2006, anyone aged 13 or above can register on the website.
By late 2007, there were 100,000 business pages on Facebook. These pages were created by companies to promote themselves and attract customers. On October 24, 2007, Microsoft revealed to have purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. Once year later, Facebook announced its plan to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
In July 2010, the company announced to have touched the milestone of 500 million users, making it the world’s largest online social network at the time. At that time, almost half of the Facebook users were using the site daily, for an average of 34 minutes (according to the company’s data).
According to SecondMarket Inc., Facebook’s value in November 2010 was $41 billion, making it the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.
The initial public offering of Facebook was held in February 2012. Three months later, the company started selling stock to the public, and reached an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. As of March 31, 2016, the social network had over 1.65 billion monthly active users, and it is now also the world’s most popular social networking site based on the number of active user accounts.
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