Facebook provides data for 20% user info requests from Bangladesh govt

Facebook Inc has provided more user information to Bangladesh.

The government had asked the social media giant for information on 10 user accounts.

Facebook in its latest Government Requests Report says it produced data for 20 percent of those requests between January and June this year.

Dhaka requested information on nine accounts in the form of 10 requests. One among those was categorised an ‘emergency’ request.

Facebook’s half-yearly report, released on Thursday, also said it blocked access to two ‘contents’ following requests by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) that said those were blasphemous and in breach of the ICT Act.

But the report of the online social networking service did not reveal information about the user acoounts or the contents in question, as usual.

Facebook began publishing reports twice a year from 2013 about how much information it was providing governments and agencies.

But Bangladesh government got response to its requests from the company for the first time in the second half of 2015.

Bangladesh had sought information on 31 users through 12 requests during the July-December period.

The social network site authorities provided 16.67 percent of the information, said the half-yearly report.

It had also blocked view of four contents during the period following request from the BTRC, which argued that the contents hurt religious sentiments.

From early 2013 to 2015 June, Bangladesh requested information on 37 users but Facebook had not responded.

It also did not respond to three other requests the government made between January and June 2015 for information concerning three users.

A government count puts the Facebook users in Bangladesh at around 30 million. Worldwide, a fourth of the population, or 1.79 billion, use it as well.

The government blocked Facebook for 22 days since Nov 18 last year following the murders of two foreign nationals and an attack on a police check post in an effort to cut off communication links among militants and terrorists.

It had also banned microblogging site Twitter and free voice calling and chat applications Skype and Imo on the grounds that militants and hoodlums communicate with each other to dodge police surveillance.

Last November, State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim in a letter to the Facebook authorities had highlighted the misuse of the site at that time.

She also sat with Facebook's Asia and Pacific region chief in Singapore in January this year.

After returning home, she said the Facebook authorities had assured her of considering the Bangladesh government’s requests and complaints made in the context of cyber security, offensive comments against women and Bangladesh’s religious and societal values.

Last June, she told Parliament that the government had reached an ‘understanding’ on getting redress regarding ‘unwanted matters’ with Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc, formerly Google, and Microsoft Corp.

According to Reuters news agency, Facebook Inc said on Wednesday that government requests for user account data rose 27 percent in the first half of 2016 compared to the second half of last year, with US law enforcement agencies and India topping the list.

Government requests for account data globally rose to 59,229 from 46,710 and more than half contained a non-disclosure order that prohibited the social networking website from notifying users.