Twitter: Governments are requesting user info at a dangerous rate

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
29 Jul 2022 12:06

Twitter is warning that governments around the globe are ramping up demands for user information.

Twitter warns governments are demanding user info at an alarming rate.

Twitter warned on Thursday that municipal, state, and national governments around the world are increasingly requesting that the company erase content and reveal private information from user accounts.

In a new study, the corporation stated that it received a record amount of legal demands from governments, approximately 50,000 during a six-month period last year. The 47,572 legal demands related to 198,931 distinct accounts.

The United States accounts for the majority of requests for account information, accounting for 20% of all requests, according to Twitter. Japan received the most requests for Twitter to remove content, according to AP.

Twitter stated that it fulfilled roughly 40% of all requests for user data. This isn't a unique incident, as Twitter reported that the amount of requests has climbed following each reporting period.

Similarly, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, reported an uptick in government requests for private user data last year.

“We’re seeing governments become more aggressive in how they try to use legal tactics to unmask the people using our service, collect information about account owners, and also using legal demands as a way to try and silence people,” Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter’s safety and integrity, said Thursday, per AP.

According to Rob Mahoney, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, governments are increasingly attempting to restrict online content and muzzle opponents.

“This surge in government demands for content takedowns and information on journalists is part of a global trend of increasing censorship and manipulation of information,” Mahoney said. “Social media platforms are vital for reporters and they must do more to resist government attempts to silence critical voices.”

Feds tracking phone locations with third-party data

A few weeks earlier, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) unveiled in previously unreleased records that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been acquiring location data of its targets from third parties to avert requiring a warrant to pursue a certain person of interest.

The documents show that DHS is not alone in purchasing its way around the US constitution, as agencies such as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were able to purchase tons of location data without any oversight before using it to track the movements of millions of cellphones within the United States.

Though technically not a violation of the constitution, the practice is incredibly shady.

Obtaining data about communication within the United States from telecommunication providers requires the agency seeking to acquire the data to obtain a warrant, which must be approved by a judge. However, there is no law against buying data from brokers and shady third-party companies that are not subjected to any constraints.

For a small sum of millions of dollars in taxpayer money, federal and law enforcement agencies can get unrestricted access to every US citizen's privacy and gather personal data about them that they would otherwise be unable to access.