Twitter is Committed to the Open Exchange of Information: 5th Twitter #Transparency Report 2014

Twitter issued their fifth transparency report today in an attempt to be more open about a certain section i.e. disclosure on national security requests. In addition, the transparency report reveals the rising requests Twitter receives w.r.t. content pull downs, copyright violations and account information that various governments across the world have contacted Twitter for.

“As we alluded to in our last post, earlier this year we met with officials from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Washington to push for our ability to provide greater transparency concerning national security requests.” Stated Twitter on its blog.

Though the micro blogging site has not revealed the exact numbers, they have stated ranges in which these requests are received.

Account Information Request

“Between January and June of this year, we received 2,058 requests (a 46 percent increase from the last report) for account information from 54 countries, with eight countries that had not submitted requests previously,” revealed by Twitter on the blog.

United States requested the highest amount of account information (1257) followed by Japan (192), Saudi Arabia (189) and Brazil (77). India received 16 account information requests.

Removal Requests

“We received 432 requests to remove content (up more than 14 percent) from 31 countries, with three new countries submitting demands since January 2014. In addition, we’ve received 9,199 copyright takedown requests for Twitter and Vine content (up 38 percent),” was mentioned by Twitter.

The highest number of removal requests was made by Turkey (121) and France (107). While India did not receive any request from court orders, it did get removal request from government agencies but it was only limited to 5.

Copyright notices

“We have seen a 27% increase in takedown notices received and an 80% increase in counter notices since our last report,” revealed Twitter.

Twitter and Vine are both a part of these affected accounts. Users should take note that Twitter offers instructions to them for filing counter notices in case they want to make an appeal.