Twitter releases transparency report: U.S. government makes most data requests

The government’s requests make up 78 percent of those received worldwide by the company. That’s a slight drop from the second half of 2012, when the U.S. made over 80 percent of all requests.

Remaining data requests are spread out among several dozen countries. The only other nations to make more than 20 requests are Brazil (22), Italy (22), the United Kingdom (26), and Japan (87).

Perhaps reflecting Twitter’s presence in the United States, U.S. data requests are significantly more likely to be successful than those in the rest of the world.

Data requests from Twitter have been steadily increasing, from 849 in the first half of 2012 to 1,009 in the second half to 1,319 today.

In contrast with its dominance in the area of data requests, the U.S. made only two requests for removal on content, both issued by courts. Here, it was outpaced by Brazil, Turkey, France, Germany, and Russia.
The report did not disclose how many, if any, government requests were related to national security.