The government of Bangladesh has requested Facebook to provide the information of 1,171 users of the country. From January to June of this year, Facebook’s parent organization Meta had been asked for this information.
The information came in light from to the latest transparency report of Facebook’s parent company Meta.
According to that report, a total of 659 requests have been made by the Bangladesh government to know the information of thousands of Facebook users in the country. Of these, 49 applications were emergency disclosure requests. In view of which Facebook has already provided the information of 66.01 percent of users to the Bangladesh government.
According to the Meta Transparency report, the Bangladesh government has requested the most information from Facebook in the past six months. Of these, there were 271 requests for user information from January to June 2021. Besides, 525 new requests were made in the next 6 months (July-December).
- The number of government requests to Meta for user data is increasing.
- Application growth rate is 10.5% in the first 6 months of the year.
- Which is 15.6% higher than those in the US
- At this time the content is limited to 89 thousand 368
- Rate of restricted content increased by 75%
Subsequently, in response to the request of the Bangladesh government, last year, Facebook provided information on 50 and 66.86 percent of users respectively. However, in the first six months of this year, Facebook has responded somewhat less to the government’s request.
Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar expects 100% response to Meta applications.
“Meta is now responding to 66 percent of our applications,” said the minister. But we hope that they will respond 100% to our request. In 2018 when I took the charge, it was zero. From there we managed to bring it to 66 percent. But our efforts will continue. We cannot allow anything harmful to the state and people to happen.’
The Meta Transparency Report also informed that, recently the rate of requesting information of Facebook users from different countries of the world has increased to a great extent. In the first 6 months of this year (January-June), Facebook received a total of 237,414 requests from different countries. Which is more than 10 percent compared to the period from January to June 2021. Of these, the highest number of requests for user information have been made from the United States. After that, the list includes neighboring countries like India, Germany, Brazil, France and the United Kingdom.
It is worth noting that, Facebook’s parent organization Meta publishes its Transparency Report twice a year (every six months). Where the government of a country wants what kind of services from the organization is highlighted. However, the Transparency Report does not reveal which country has requested information on which account.