Govt seeks 17 Facebook users' info

The government has asked the authorities of social networking platform Facebook to give information on 17 users.

The request was served through seven requests from January to June this year. But the FB authorities have not served the requests of the Bangladesh government.

"We respond to valid requests relating to criminal cases. Each and every request we receive is checked for legal sufficiency and we reject or require greater specificity on requests that are overly broad or vague," Facebook said in their latest report.

Facebook Inc said requests by governments for user information rose by about a quarter in the first half of 2014 over the second half of last year.

In the first six months of 2014, governments around the world made 34,946 requests for data. During the same time, the amount of content restricted because of local laws increased about 19 percent.

"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 said in a company blog post yesterday. (http://bit.ly/1twLkqt)

Google Inc reported in September a 15 percent sequential increase in the number of requests in the first half of this year, and a 150 percent rise in the last five years, from governments around the world to reveal user information in criminal investigations.