Twitter Releases Government Requests for User Data

Twitter has released its first ever Transparency Report, detailing the number of government requests it receives for user information and whether or not it complies.

Jeremy Kessel, Twitter’s legal policy manager, revealed that it received more government requests for user information in the first half of this year than in all of 2011.

The social networking site said it was inspired by to release the information after Google issued a similar report. Twitter said it would release the information every six months.

Between Jan 1 and June 30 of this year, Twitter said it received 849 requests for user information from 23 countries. It said it complied with 63 percent of those requests, in full or in part.

The bulk of the requests, nearly 80 percent, came from the United States, where authorities made 679 requests involving 948 user accounts. Twitter said it complied with 75 percent of the requests.

The next highest number of requests, 98, came from Japan. Twitter said it complied with just 20 percent.

The social networking site said it received three requests to delete tweets from Greece. It declined in all three cases.