Twitter sees ‘largest increase’ ever in government requests for account info in first half of 2015

Twitter has issued its latest transparency report, revealing a 52 percent increase in government requests for account information — the largest increase yet.

From January 2015 to June 2015, law enforcement agencies made 4,363 requests for information. That’s up from 2,871 during the six months prior. Of those requests, Twitter produced information for 58 percent. In the U.S., Twitter complied with 80 percent of the 2,436 requests for information from government officials. Only two other countries saw compliance rates as high: Australia and Kuwait. But both of those countries had substantially fewer requests: Australian officials made nine requests in the last six months, while Kuwaiti officials made seven.

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Requests by U.S. government officials comprise 56 percent of requests worldwide. Japan has the second highest numbers, making up 10 percent of all requests, closely followed by Turkey. It’s also worth noting that India’s requests increased 175 percent over the last period to 113 requests, 19 percent of which produced some information.

The new report also includes first-ever requests from Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Poland, and Serbia. While Cyprus, Poland, and Serbia only made 1-3 requests each, law enforcement officials in the Dominican Republic made eight.

Removal requests from both government and non-government entities increased 26 percent to 1003. Meanwhile, copyright takedowns increased 11 percent since the last reporting period. Periscope has specifically received 1,391 copyright takedown requests since it launched in March.