India tops blocking content requests on Facebook: reports

New Delhi: Indian law enforcement agencies requested Facebook to block content in 4,765 instances citing local laws.Facebook stated that it blocked its content after government officials and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT) reported that such posts were violating laws like criticising a religion or the state.

As per data from the second Government Requests Report by the California-headquartered firm, India made the highest requests for restricting content, followed by Turkey (2014), Pakistan (162), Israel (113), Germany (84) and France (80).

On blocking content, facebook officials also stated, ‘We restricted access in India to a number of pieces of content reported primarily by law enforcement officials and the ICERT under local laws prohibiting criticism of a religion or the state.’

Facebook's report also revealed that India made the second largest number of user requests at 3,598 after the US, which sought information on about 12,598 Facebook users in the second half of 2013.

In total, Facebook received more than 28,000 government data requests during July-December 2013. Following requests from the US and India were that of the UK (1,906 requests), Italy (1,699), Germany (1,687) and France (1,661).