Facebook turns down Barbados Government’s request for information
Fri Aug 30, 2013
The international controversy over state surveillance and spying has reached Barbados.{{more}}
Popular online social network Facebook says it has received and denied Barbados Government requests for information on three Bajans and their accounts.
In response, Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite told Barbados TODAY he knew nothing about the issue, which raised concern and generated debate among several Barbadians on Facebook on Wednesday.
The world has been in an uproar ever since United States National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden leaked information on âcyber-intelligenceâ activities by that American entity, including its use of heavily used networks, including Facebook.
On Tuesday, in that companyâs first ever Global Government Requests Report, covering the period January to June this year, its General Counsel Colin Stretch released statistics showing Barbados was
the only CARICOM country to request user information.
The information published related to both criminal and national security requests from 74 countries seeking information on nearly 38,000 accounts. About half of the requests were made by the US Government.
Facebook said there were three âtotal requestsâ from Government in the six-month period and that the requests covered âusers/accountsâ.
In terms of the âpercentage of requests where some data (was) producedâ to the unspecified Barbadian authorities, however, Facebook said this was zero per cent.
Stretch said it provided no such information because it was not ârequired by law to disclose at least some dataâ, and did not specify requests prior to this year or subsequent to June. Brathwaite said he was unaware of the issue when contacted.
âI know nothing about this,â he said. Facebookâs General Counsel reiterated in the report that his organisation had âstringent processes in place to handle all government data requests.
âWe believe this process protects the data of the people who use our service, and requires governments to meet a very high legal bar with each individual request in order to receive any information about any of our users,â he said.
âWe scrutinize each request for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and require a detailed description of the legal and factual bases for each request.
âWe fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests. When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name.â
Stretch explained that governments made requests to Facebook and many other companies seeking account information in official investigations.
âThe vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings. In many of these cases, these government requests seek basic subscriber information, such as name and length of service. Other requests may also seek IP address logs or actual account content,â he noted.
Facebook plans to ârelease these reports regularly in the futureâ. shawncumberbatch@barbadostoday.bb
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