There's been a near 50% increase in the number of government requests for Twitter account information, with the US dominating proceedings despite the platform's global appeal.
Twitter claimed to have received 46% more requests for account information affecting 48% more account holders in the first half of 2014 compared to the second half of 2013, it said in its latest Transparency Report. Typically, such requests are made in connection with criminal investigations, it added.
The United States comprised 61% of all requests, up 2% from the previous report, with Japan the next biggest requester (9%, down from 15%). Brazil and the United Kingdom came next, comprising 4% each. According to Twitter, Brazil, Turkey and Spain all more than doubled their previous volumes, with Brazil tripling its 2H 2013 figures.
Turkey famously banned the micro-blogging platform in March following a series of leaks that implicated prime minister Tayyip Erdogan's administration in a corruption scandal.The ban was eventually lifted around a fortnight after a court ruling scuppered Erdogan's plans to "wipe out Twitter"
Seeking to explain the significant rise in access requests from governments around the world, Twitter claimed it; "may be attributed to Twitter's ongoing international expansion, but also appears to follow the industry trend" Eight new countries apparently submitted inquiries since the last report, bringing the global total to 54. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of government requests from Washington resulted in Twitter providing "some information", while the figure slumped to 46% for the UK.
The platform appeared to be less willing to remove content. It received 14% more request to do so in the first half of the year with the majority coming from Turkey (186), France (108), and Russia (32). However, overall 25 accounts and 251 tweets were blocked globally.
In the UK Twitter complied with just 6% of requests while in the US the figure was zero.There was also a 38% increase in takedown requests for copyright reasons- bringing the figure to 9,199 - and an 80% increase in counter notices since the previous report. Twitter said it complied overall in 76% of cases.
The majority of such requests (12.2%) came from anti-piracy organization Remove Your Media. In the effort to push for even greater transparency, Twitter said it has also asked the Justice department for permission to publish data related to national security requests.