Twitter Releases Statistics on Government Requests

Twitter said government agencies in the United States had sought information on 948 Twitter user accounts in the first half of this year, more than any other country in the world.

Japan came second, with requests for information affecting 147 Twitter accounts. The company received a total of six requests from courts and law enforcement agencies worldwide to take down content. They came from countries as varied as France and Pakistan. The company said it had so far complied with none of them. It also took down more than 5,000 tweets in response to requests from copyright holders. The information was released in a blog post announcing what the company called the Transparency Report, detailing government inquiries of who posts what on Twitter. The report, which Twitter said it would compile and publish twice a year, is modeled after a similar effort by Google.