Facebook has announced that it gave the British government thousands of user details over the course of the first half of 2016. The announcement said that UK officials requested the details of over 7,000 profiles from January to June 2016, a 30% increase on the same period in 2015. Whilst 6,039 profiles were requested for the course of criminal proceedings, the rest were requested by authorities under a clause that allowed the transfer of data when there was an “imminent risk of serious injury or death”. The social network also said that whilst it proceeded with 87% of requests, it turned down the rest due to them being what it called “overly broad or vague”. Facebook also mentioned that the UK made more requests than the US and India, and that its requests were granted more than any other nation. Facebook's deputy general counsel, Chris Sonderby, added that “a rigorous approach” is applied to every request, in order to “protect the information” of users.Â
