Although good old Mark Zuckerberg has been showing a lot of love to India and the government’s Digital India initiative , Facebook is carrying out a campaign to increase transparency and reform government surveillance around the world, which includes a notification if the government is spying on you .
The latest revelation by the social media giant comes weeks after a report that suggested India has improved in terms of internet freedom , but tells a different story altogether.
The Global Government Request Report released on Wednesday says that Facebook authorities received the maximum number of requests for data, in the first half of 2015, from the Indian government. There were 5,115 requests concerning 6.268 accounts in which the Indian government asked for data, and was given access to “some data” in 45% of the cases.
That’s not all, although there was a global rise for restricting content violating local law, India led the way with 15,155 posts being reported and taken down. Most of these posts are said to have been restricted because they were anti-religious and has potential to cause unrest. The number of restricted post went up dramatically since the second half of 2014, when it was 5832 content pieces.
The current disclosure also puts the spotlight on recent developments when it was suggested that the government would also have access to people’s WhatsApp messages , and the debate that was sparked off after the porn ban.
