11 ms·

Global Government Requests Report

117 points by r0h1n 13y ago

barretts 13y ago
My initial reaction to this headline was, "Orwellian doublespeak at its best," which is of course the hoped-for response. On second thought, I don't see why this matters. Facebook transparency matters only to Facebook account holders. And it's free to create an account if you don't have one. Getting mad over this would be like getting mad when the government releases electronic data sets, which of course means you have to have a computer (and computer savviness) to access them.
- rohansingh 13y ago
  Agreed. I would be worried if this were a page on Facebook's policy about government requests. That would mean you would have to sign up and consent to a policy before being able to read. This, on the other hand, is a report about ongoing operations. Kind of sucks it's not entirely public, but I don't see that Facebook has any ethical obligation to make it so.
- uptown 13y ago
  "Facebook transparency matters only to Facebook account holders." Facebook transparency likely also matters to anybody with a "shadow profile". Even if you don't have an account, any friend who has synced their phone's phonebook containing your information to Facebook's servers has established a profile of you which Facebook then has a responsibility to maintain in a responsible manner.
- oakwhiz 13y ago
  It is entirely possible that you might not want your account details associated with the fact that you are interested in knowing about Facebook's transparency.
- alcari 13y ago
  It also matters to anyone who formerly had an account. We're reasonably sure Facebook doesn't delete peoples' content when they request their account be deleted, so such people both have data in Facebook's system and lack an account with which to view the transparency report.
mherdeg 13y ago
In case anyone is curious why there's a comment about the headline, the original headline was ""Facebook's "Transparency Report" cannot be viewed without a Facebook account"" and the new headline is "Facebook's Transparency Report".
sgrenfro 13y ago
I'm a software engineer at Facebook. Requiring login for this page was a simple oversight and should be fixed sometime this evening California time. Sorry for the confusion.
- sgrenfro 13y ago
  In the meantime, here's a screenshot so you can see it without logging in: http://i.imgur.com/025M2E6.png http://i.imgur.com/025M2E6.png
- rhizome 13y ago
  How does requiring 8-10 hours for this comport with "move fast and break things?"
  - freehunter 13y ago
    1) Could be propagation time to their CDNs. 2) Could be the next time available in their schedule to make this change.
ryguytilidie 13y ago
This isn't very interesting data because I have to have a shred of trust in someone to think the data they've presented is accurate.
- waylonrobert 13y ago
  What reason do you have to believe it's inaccurate? What would Facebook gain by posting juked numbers of government requests? Seems pretty honest to me. We'll see if they stay true to their promise to scale deeper and show what kinds of requests they receive.
  - npaquin 13y ago
    lol.
- yen223 13y ago
  Hah, I thought the same about the documents that Snowden leaked...
  - ryguytilidie 13y ago
    Because you didn't believe Snowden or the NSA?
niuzeta 13y ago
Big Brother says: "Big brother loves you"
casca 13y ago
This is not a transparency report. The title on the Facebook page is far more accurate: Global Government Requests Report
hglaser 13y ago
This is a great step. The analogous Google page seems to be here: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/countries/?t=table http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/co... Can anyone confirm that these include National Security Letters? CSV export would be nice. I immediately wanted to compute requests per capita by country.
- eterm 13y ago
  That is the page for removal requests. This is the page for user data requests: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/
  - hglaser 13y ago
    Thank you, edited.
- anxiousest 13y ago
  http://googleblog.blogspot.com2013/03/transparency-report-shedding-more-light.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com2013/03/transparency-report-sh...
- sjbach 13y ago
  If you're asking about NSLs to Google, you can see the ranges on this page: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US... These aren't aggregated into the counts shown in the table you linked. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/countries/?t=table http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/co...
Cowen 13y ago
Facebook's hands are probably tied on some of their reporting here, but there's still some interesting stuff about the US in this report. 1. The US is by far the one requesting the most data. I'd have to run the numbers to be sure, but it looks like even controlling for population and number of FB users, the US is definitely outpacing other countries' data requests. 2. The US is the only country where FB is reporting in ranges instead of precise numbers. There could be several reasons for this, but the reason almost certainly is not that they don't know the precise numbers. NSLs seem like a safe bet here. 3. The US also has one of the highest "success" rates of government requests. 79% of government requests yield some data. This again could be interpreted several ways, but the two most enticing ones are that the US isn't sending a lot of fishing requests because when they request data from FB, they're already pretty certain about what they're looking to find. The more disturbing concern would be if the US only queries FB for things where the NSA's database is insufficient, which would mean the number of requests they submit to Facebook is not at all indicative of how many queries on user data they actually do. EDIT: Here's a quick Gist I made of this report as a CSV. https://gist.github.com/Cowen/adb2d335862a95870773 https://gist.github.com/Cowen/adb2d335862a95870773
- hglaser 13y ago
  Re 3, couldn't it simply be that the US government has the most leverage over Facebook, since Facebook is headquartered in the US, and the majority of its staff and all its senior management live there?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    There's no leverage needed, unless you're thinking that the NSA would rather send G-men to disappear the senior staff or something, instead of simply getting a FISA warrant for the hopefully-rare cases where Facebook has reason to push back against an NSL. But Facebook has always claimed they will comply with the law, and the law is very much slanted to the U.S. already, there's not much extra leverage needed. NSA is undoubtedly not even the only source of these requests either (e.g. many might come from FBI investigating purely "home-grown" extremists, local cops following up on Amber Alerts, etc.), and the non-NSA ones would already have had an Article III warrant issued, which Facebook has always claimed they will obey. From their FAQ: "The vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings." and "The report contains the total number of requests we've received from each government, including both criminal and national security requests." However, even if we ignore all that other nations have their own forms of leverage... it would certainly be easier to unilaterally block Facebook in other countries than in the U.S., for instance.
prehkugler 13y ago
Seems like everyone is discussing "wow, there is a report; it's from Facebook, so it can't be true" instead of "wow the US govt has made ~5x requests of the next-largest requestor." Edit: see Cowen's comment on contents of the report.
o0-0o 13y ago
21,000 Users Impacted in the US 47 in Pakistan Gentlemen of Facebook and NSA - you are going about this backwards, and we're onto you.
- revscat 13y ago
  I suspect that the government is more interested in the activities of left-leaning groups like Occupy. This is another data point supporting that hypothesis, albeit not a strong one: there are far fewer Facebook users in Pakistan, for one.
- GHFigs 13y ago
  21,000 Users Impacted in the US The report does not tell you the country of the user accounts impacted, only the origin of the request.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    It also doesn't tell you which US Federal, state, or local agency made the request, or whether the request was for simple criminal investigation or for "national security" purposes, both of which are detailed in the FAQ. ;)
grecy 13y ago
Some interesting ones jump out at me. Hong Kong: 1 user, 100% hit rate. Iceland: 1 user, 100% hit rate. I wonder who could have been logging into Facebook from those countries? Russia: 1 user, 0% hit rate. I wonder if this is for the same user I'm alluding to above, and if Russia has a firmer stance. Of course, it's all wild speculation.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
GHFigs 13y ago
Note that this includes all requests from local, state, and any federal agency, for any data. It also only tells you the country of origin for the request, not the country of the user for which data was requested.
djvv 13y ago
Where is China?
- omarali 13y ago
  Facebook is blocked in China.
antonwinter 13y ago
take away lesson the more 'democratic' a country = government wants to know a lot about you thats if democracy isn't a myth
markdown 13y ago
There are no Pacific Island countries on the list other than Australia and New Zealand. Lack of technical competency?
mr_spothawk 13y ago
"Big Brother likes your post."

117 points by r0h1n 13y ago

My initial reaction to this headline was, "Orwellian doublespeak at its best," which is of course the hoped-for response. On second thought, I don't see why this matters. Facebook transparency matters only to Facebook account holders. And it's free to create an account if you don't have one. Getting mad over this would be like getting mad when the government releases electronic data sets, which of course means you have to have a computer (and computer savviness) to access them.

rohansingh 13y ago
Agreed. I would be worried if this were a page on Facebook's policy about government requests. That would mean you would have to sign up and consent to a policy before being able to read. This, on the other hand, is a report about ongoing operations. Kind of sucks it's not entirely public, but I don't see that Facebook has any ethical obligation to make it so.
uptown 13y ago
"Facebook transparency matters only to Facebook account holders." Facebook transparency likely also matters to anybody with a "shadow profile". Even if you don't have an account, any friend who has synced their phone's phonebook containing your information to Facebook's servers has established a profile of you which Facebook then has a responsibility to maintain in a responsible manner.
oakwhiz 13y ago
It is entirely possible that you might not want your account details associated with the fact that you are interested in knowing about Facebook's transparency.
alcari 13y ago
It also matters to anyone who formerly had an account. We're reasonably sure Facebook doesn't delete peoples' content when they request their account be deleted, so such people both have data in Facebook's system and lack an account with which to view the transparency report.

mherdeg 13y ago

In case anyone is curious why there's a comment about the headline, the original headline was ""Facebook's "Transparency Report" cannot be viewed without a Facebook account"" and the new headline is "Facebook's Transparency Report".

sgrenfro 13y ago

I'm a software engineer at Facebook. Requiring login for this page was a simple oversight and should be fixed sometime this evening California time. Sorry for the confusion.

sgrenfro 13y ago
In the meantime, here's a screenshot so you can see it without logging in: http://i.imgur.com/025M2E6.png http://i.imgur.com/025M2E6.png
rhizome 13y ago
How does requiring 8-10 hours for this comport with "move fast and break things?"
- freehunter 13y ago
  1) Could be propagation time to their CDNs. 2) Could be the next time available in their schedule to make this change.

ryguytilidie 13y ago

This isn't very interesting data because I have to have a shred of trust in someone to think the data they've presented is accurate.

waylonrobert 13y ago
What reason do you have to believe it's inaccurate? What would Facebook gain by posting juked numbers of government requests? Seems pretty honest to me. We'll see if they stay true to their promise to scale deeper and show what kinds of requests they receive.
- npaquin 13y ago
  lol.
yen223 13y ago
Hah, I thought the same about the documents that Snowden leaked...
- ryguytilidie 13y ago
  Because you didn't believe Snowden or the NSA?

niuzeta 13y ago

Big Brother says: "Big brother loves you"

casca 13y ago

This is not a transparency report. The title on the Facebook page is far more accurate: Global Government Requests Report

hglaser 13y ago

This is a great step. The analogous Google page seems to be here: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/countries/?t=table http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/co... Can anyone confirm that these include National Security Letters? CSV export would be nice. I immediately wanted to compute requests per capita by country.

eterm 13y ago
That is the page for removal requests. This is the page for user data requests: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/
- hglaser 13y ago
  Thank you, edited.
anxiousest 13y ago
http://googleblog.blogspot.com2013/03/transparency-report-shedding-more-light.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com2013/03/transparency-report-sh...
sjbach 13y ago
If you're asking about NSLs to Google, you can see the ranges on this page: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US... These aren't aggregated into the counts shown in the table you linked. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/countries/?t=table http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/co...

Cowen 13y ago

Facebook's hands are probably tied on some of their reporting here, but there's still some interesting stuff about the US in this report. 1. The US is by far the one requesting the most data. I'd have to run the numbers to be sure, but it looks like even controlling for population and number of FB users, the US is definitely outpacing other countries' data requests. 2. The US is the only country where FB is reporting in ranges instead of precise numbers. There could be several reasons for this, but the reason almost certainly is not that they don't know the precise numbers. NSLs seem like a safe bet here. 3. The US also has one of the highest "success" rates of government requests. 79% of government requests yield some data. This again could be interpreted several ways, but the two most enticing ones are that the US isn't sending a lot of fishing requests because when they request data from FB, they're already pretty certain about what they're looking to find. The more disturbing concern would be if the US only queries FB for things where the NSA's database is insufficient, which would mean the number of requests they submit to Facebook is not at all indicative of how many queries on user data they actually do. EDIT: Here's a quick Gist I made of this report as a CSV. https://gist.github.com/Cowen/adb2d335862a95870773 https://gist.github.com/Cowen/adb2d335862a95870773

hglaser 13y ago
Re 3, couldn't it simply be that the US government has the most leverage over Facebook, since Facebook is headquartered in the US, and the majority of its staff and all its senior management live there?
- mpyne 13y ago
  There's no leverage needed, unless you're thinking that the NSA would rather send G-men to disappear the senior staff or something, instead of simply getting a FISA warrant for the hopefully-rare cases where Facebook has reason to push back against an NSL. But Facebook has always claimed they will comply with the law, and the law is very much slanted to the U.S. already, there's not much extra leverage needed. NSA is undoubtedly not even the only source of these requests either (e.g. many might come from FBI investigating purely "home-grown" extremists, local cops following up on Amber Alerts, etc.), and the non-NSA ones would already have had an Article III warrant issued, which Facebook has always claimed they will obey. From their FAQ: "The vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings." and "The report contains the total number of requests we've received from each government, including both criminal and national security requests." However, even if we ignore all that other nations have their own forms of leverage... it would certainly be easier to unilaterally block Facebook in other countries than in the U.S., for instance.

prehkugler 13y ago

Seems like everyone is discussing "wow, there is a report; it's from Facebook, so it can't be true" instead of "wow the US govt has made ~5x requests of the next-largest requestor." Edit: see Cowen's comment on contents of the report.

o0-0o 13y ago

21,000 Users Impacted in the US 47 in Pakistan Gentlemen of Facebook and NSA - you are going about this backwards, and we're onto you.

revscat 13y ago
I suspect that the government is more interested in the activities of left-leaning groups like Occupy. This is another data point supporting that hypothesis, albeit not a strong one: there are far fewer Facebook users in Pakistan, for one.
GHFigs 13y ago
21,000 Users Impacted in the US The report does not tell you the country of the user accounts impacted, only the origin of the request.
- mpyne 13y ago
  It also doesn't tell you which US Federal, state, or local agency made the request, or whether the request was for simple criminal investigation or for "national security" purposes, both of which are detailed in the FAQ. ;)

grecy 13y ago

Some interesting ones jump out at me. Hong Kong: 1 user, 100% hit rate. Iceland: 1 user, 100% hit rate. I wonder who could have been logging into Facebook from those countries? Russia: 1 user, 0% hit rate. I wonder if this is for the same user I'm alluding to above, and if Russia has a firmer stance. Of course, it's all wild speculation.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

GHFigs 13y ago

Note that this includes all requests from local, state, and any federal agency, for any data. It also only tells you the country of origin for the request, not the country of the user for which data was requested.

djvv 13y ago

Where is China?

omarali 13y ago
Facebook is blocked in China.

antonwinter 13y ago

take away lesson the more 'democratic' a country = government wants to know a lot about you thats if democracy isn't a myth

markdown 13y ago

There are no Pacific Island countries on the list other than Australia and New Zealand. Lack of technical competency?

mr_spothawk 13y ago

"Big Brother likes your post."