Social networking company Facebook said in a statement that requests by different governments round the world sharply rose during the first half of this year.
Governments requested 34,946 requests while Facebook said limits on some content to comply with local legislation increased by 19 percent during the same period.
Facebook said in a statement that it looks at every government request it gets and it “pushes back hard” if it finds deficiencies in the requests or if the requests are too broad.
It said that over the last year it has challenged bulk search warrants in New York that demanded it hand over data from the accounts of close to 400 people.
“We’ve argued that these overly broad warrants violate the privacy rights of the people on Facebook and ignore constituional safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the satement continued.
It is appealing these warrants.
Facebook also said it works with the IT industry and partners to “push governments for additional transparency and to reform surveillance practices necessary to rebuild people’s trust in the internet.”
All government data requests should be narrowly tailored, proportionate, and subject to judicial oversight.
