Facebook is reporting a significant increase in the number of government requests for user data this week, which have risen more than 20 percent since the same time last year.
“Since our first report, we’ve seen an increase in government requests for data and for content restrictions,” Facebook deputy general counsel Chris Sonderby wrote in a Facebook blog post. ” In the first six months of 2014, governments around the world made 34,946 requests for data — an increase of about 24% since the last half of 2013.”
Despite Facebook’s consistent compliance with federal requests for user data (the social network has surrendered data belonging to user profiles about 80 percent of the time according to The Hill), Sonderby said the company scrutinizes every request and does “push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests.”
Over the last year Facebook has challenged such “bulk search warrants” in New York for account data belonging to some 400 users, which Sonderby said was “unprecedented” and “by far the largest” the company has ever received.
“We’ve argued that these overly broad warrants violate the privacy rights of the people on Facebook and ignore constitutional safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures,” Sonderby wrote. “Despite a setback in the lower court, we’re aggressively pursuing an appeal to a higher court to invalidate these sweeping warrants and to force the government to return the data it has seized.”
The company expects a ruling on the case in a New York appeals court before the end of the year.
Fellow Silicon Valley giant Microsoft is currently amidst a similar battle with the Obama administration over the government’s demand that the company turn over user data stored in servers stationed overseas — data Microsoft claims the government has no authority over. (RELATED: Obama Administration Claims Right To Access U.S. Company Data Overseas)
Microsoft and Facebook both lost the initial court rulings on the case, and both have since appealed to federal appellate courts. (RELATED: U.S. Judge Says Microsoft Can’t Stop DOJ From Looking At Emails)
“[W]e believe all government data requests must be narrowly tailored, proportionate to the case in review, and subject to strict judicial oversight,” Sonderby said.