Week Five

Facebook Sees Spike In Government Data Requests

Most of the requests came from the U.S. and India.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-government-data-request_us_57225d9fe4b0f309baf03766?utm_hp_ref=technology 

"Facebook has about 1.65 billion regular users, or about one in every four people in the world.

Facebook said about 60 percent of requests in the United States had a non-disclosure order prohibiting the company from notifying the user of the government request.

This was the first time Facebook has included details on non-disclosure orders since it started issuing the global requests reports in 2013."

Facebook reports that government requests for data have increased by 13% in the second half of 2015. It also reported that most of those requests have non-disclosure orders as well, by the amount of 60%. This means that users aren't aware that their information has been requested. I've also noticed in our local news that they are grabbing profile pictures and anything that is public on various articles. This is kind of creepy to me. I'm not sure that I like how available our information is, and it's evident with the disruption over hacking the iPhone and other issues, that other people are starting slowly to become alarmed. It would appear that Facebook is also letting their users know that this is happening, since this is the first time that they've included them in issued the global requests report since 2013.