Rise in requests for Facebook to preserve records for probes – Asia Newsday

SINGAPORE – A total of 687 requests were made by the Singapore Government to preserve records of 1,630 users on social media platforms owned by Facebook from January to June this year for criminal investigations – almost 10 times the number over the same period last year.

There were 72 such requests covering 117 accounts in the first half of last year and 288 requests involving 357 accounts in the second half, said the social media giant in a transparency report published last week.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Communications and Information said last Saturday (Nov 13) that the increase in requests to Facebook for information on and preservation of accounts over the past year is due to the significant rise in cybercrime, including online scams and cyber extortion.

“The requests were mainly due to online scams such as social media impersonation as well as online harassment such as doxxing,” said the spokesman.

He added that from January to June this year, there were no requests to Facebook related to the country’s fake news law, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act.

Facebook, which changed its name to Meta recently, said that when it receives requests from governments, it preserves a temporary snapshot of the relevant account information. It does not disclose any of the preserved records unless and until it has verified that the request is legally sound.

The company said on its website that the vast majority of requests by government officials for data about its users relate to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings.

The latest report, which is published twice-yearly, details government requests for account data and Facebook’s rate of compliance, enforcement of community standards, content restrictions and Internet disruptions.

It disclosed that the firm has restricted access to 659 items here in response to reports submitted by the Health Sciences Authority pertaining to tobacco, medical and cosmetic products, and to items reported by the Ministry of Law, and by the police pertaining to unlicensed moneylenders.

The report also said the Government made 1,231 requests to Facebook for information covering 2,721 accounts from January to June this year, of which 74 per cent yielded some data.

The transparency report categorised these requests into legal and emergency requests.

Legal requests are accompanied by processes including a search warrant, and account records are disclosed according to Facebook’s terms of service and the applicable law, the social media giant says on its website on guidelines for law enforcement.

Emergency requests include matters “involving imminent harm to a child or risk of death or serious physical injury to any person and requiring disclosure of information without delay”.

All but nine of the 1,231 requests made by the Government in the first half of this year were legal requests.

The report also contained figures for data requests from other countries. The total number for the other nine Asean countries in the first half of this year was 264.

The United States had the most number of requests – at about 63,700 – followed by India with about 45,300 and Germany with around 15,600.