[caption id="attachment_130459" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Facebook's transparency report being transparent.[/caption] Facebook restricted access to 5,832 pieces of content in India during the second half of 2014 (July- Dec 2014), the highest among all the countries in the world, according to the global transparency report released by the social network. According to Facebook, most of the blocked content was requested to be blocked primarily by law enforcement agencies and the India Computer Emergency Response Team within the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. The reasons for these takedowns were vague, all “anti-religious content and hate speech that could cause unrest and disharmony” was blocked. The company did not disclose more specific information on which government agencies sent these requests, how many of these requests were backed by court orders or the reason for these requests either. It’s also not clear as to how many requests were actually sent by these government agencies, although Facebook mentions that “each and every request we receive is checked for legal sufficiency” or is rejected. Globally, Turkey came in a distant second with 3,624 pieces of content restricted, followed by Germany with a mere 60 restricted content pieces. India ranks 2nd in account information requests India ranks second in the world, behind the US, in terms of the total Facebook accounts for which governments have requested information during this period. Overall, the Indian government sent 5,473 requests seeking information for a total of 7,281 accounts on Facebook in the second half of 2014, an increase from 4,559 requests seeking…
