Governments have upped their requests for data from Facebook 20 percent since last year, Facebook revealed Tuesday.
In a blog post, the company released a report on government requests through the first half of 2014, reporting 34,946 requests for data from governments around the world. They marked this as a 24 percent increase since the second half of 2013.
The increase matches a similar rise in requests reported in September by Google.
The reputations of companies like Facebook and Google have been badly hurt by the revelations of NSA spying from Edward Snowden. Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who helped tell his story, have both cautioned against using Facebook in the last few weeks, calling it a dangerous service.
“They’re one of the worst violators of privacy in history,” said Greenwald. “Nobody should use Facebook.”
Facebook’s recent research manipulating users’ data has also affected user trust.
To combat this, Facebook highlighted their fight against bulk search warrants in New York, and said, “We continue to work with our industry and civil society partners to push governments for additional transparency and to reform surveillance practices necessary to rebuild people’s trust in the Internet.”
They also noted their support for a privacy act that would require a warrant to obtain account information.
