India tops list of request to blocking content on Facebook

Indian law enforcement agencies requested Facebook to block content in 4,765 instances citing local laws between July and December last year, the largest by any country.   

The social networking giant said it blocked content after government officials and the country’s Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT) reported that such posts were violating laws like criticising a religion or the state. According to 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).      

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). It said governments they may contact firms (like Facebook) to restrict access to content on the Internet that it believes violates their laws. "Requests are scrutinised to determine if the specified content does indeed violate local laws. If, after a thorough legal analysis, we determine content appears to violate local law, then we make it unavailable in the relevant country or territory," it added.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/new-media/item/4603-india-tops-list-of-request-to-blocking-content-on-facebook.html
Source: http://cablequest.org/news/new-media/item/4603-india-tops-list-of-request-to-blocking-content-on-facebook.html