Govt wants your Facebook data, but behind your back

The US government wants to get more and more information out of Facebook, but it doen't want you to know about it.

The social network's latest Global Government Requests Report, released on Thursday, has documented a 13 per cent rise in government requests for Facebook user data in the second half of 2015. In total, governments asked for Facebook user data a total of 46,763 times.

The report also shed light government gag orders, with Facebook revealing 60 per cent of requests from US authorities came with a "non-disclosure order" prohibiting Facebook from notifying the user in question.

Facebook also receives requests to block material for violating local laws in a particular country. One photo related to the November 2015 Paris terror attacks was subject to more than 32,000 block requests from the French government.

Facebook said it doesn't provide "back doors or direct access to people's data," emphasising that it scrutinises every request. Now you can scrutinise those requests using Facebook's interactive map, which tracks requests region by region.

Facebook's latest transparency report covers the second half of 2015 and the social networking company says it continues to see an uptick in government requests for user data worldwide.

Chris Sonderby, Facebook's deputy general counsel, wrote, ''As we have emphasized many times, Facebook does not provide any government with ''back doors'' or direct access to people's data. We scrutinize each request for user data we receive for legal sufficiency, no matter which country is making the request. If a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back hard and will fight in court, if necessary.''

There were certainly quite a few events that may have precipitated the increase in government requests during the latter half of 2015. In its transparency report, Facebook cites case studies to give readers a better understanding. Sonderby specifically calls out the single photo related to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, saying that the image ''allegedly violated French laws relating to protecting human dignity.

''We restricted access to more than 32,000 copies of the photo, in France only, in response to a legal request from the French government,'' he wrote.

To reinforce its position that it doesn't voluntarily surrender user information to governments, Facebook also explained how it's advocating for improvements in public policy and cooperation with international law enforcement.

Sonderby explained that Facebook was a supporter of the Email Privacy Act which was passed by the US House of Representatives this week, and that it also supported improving ways to make the Mutual Legal Assistance process more efficient along with ''establishing agreements between governments that resolve conflicts of laws and allow providers to respond to foreign law enforcement requests in a manner consistent with international human rights.''