Twitter has changed the way in which we communicate, enabling information, breaking news and thoughts and opinions to be shared on a global scale in 140 characters or less. The importance of Twitter, it seems, has not been lost on governments across the world.
The social network has released its latest government transparency report, revealing that the requests for user information in the latter half of 2014 increased 40% over the previous six months.
2871 requests for 7,144 user accounts were made, with Twitter co-operating with 52% of the requests.
The United States led in the number of requests made with 1622, of which Twitter complied with 80%. The biggest request increase noted came from Russia and Turkey.
Russia had, until this report, never requested Twitter user information. This time around saw 108 requests made for data, of which none were handed over by Twitter.
The UK saw 116 requests for information, with Twitter complying with 34% of the requests made. Belize, El Salvador and Kenya also made their debut in the transparency report, having requested information for the first time.
Spanning the period starting July 1 to December 31 2014, Twitter states that ‘information requests include worldwide government requests we’ve received for account information, typically in connection with criminal investigations.’
