Australian government requests for personal data on Twitter users this year has significantly increased since last year, according to Twitter’s latest Transparency Report.
The report shows 58 Australian Twitter users had their personal data specified to national authorities from 1 January to 30 June, an increase of more than 80 per cent from the previous six months. Less than 10 user information requests were made from the accounts during the period.
The highest amount of Twitter user accounts identified to government authorities were from the United States (1319), followed by Japan (103). Australia came third in the list identified on Twitter.
<i>CSO Australia</i> reported the number of Twitter accounts specified here are high given the country’s population size of 22.3 million. This is compared to the United States, with a population of 311.6 million, and Japan, with 127.8 million.
Read Government requests for Google user data grow.
Only two requests for the removal of content/accounts on Twitter were made during the first half of the year in Australia. This jumped up from one content removal request last year.
Russia had the highest amount of content/accounts removal requests from government agencies (17), followed by France (three) and Germany (three). Brazil had the highest number of content/accounts removal requests by court orders.
In the first six months of the year, 18,413 tweets and 3393 media worldwide were removed due to 5753 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices.