Facebook Makes The First Big Dent On FISA, Releases Data On All Requests It Has Received From The U.S. Government

As the PRISM scandal shows no signs of dying down in the public consciousness, Facebook just released the fullest account to date of the requests it has received from United States law enforcement and governmental authorities for the data surrounding its users. To borrow a phrase from local news sizzle reels, the numbers may surprise you. In a report issued today on Facebook’s company blog, general counsel Ted Ullyot wrote: “For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) ? was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut ? from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts. With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of U.S. state, local, or federal U.S. government request (including criminal and national security-related requests) in the past six months. We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive.” More information can be found here, and we’re updating the story as it develops. But at first blush, those numbers may not seem as scary as the initial reports on governmental surveillance of web activity would imply. Though the government under FISA does have the right to request as much information as it would like in the name of national security, it seems that those requests have affected a relatively tiny fraction of Facebook users. For a bit of background: Facebook this week joined several other technology giants including Microsoft and Google in publicly asking the government to change the restrictions prohibiting them from being fully transparent about the extent of their cooperation in the U.S. government’s surveillance activities. Thus far, requests that Facebook has received from the National Security Agency (NSA) have

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