Like it or not, governments are more curious than ever about Twitter users.
The social network released its latest government transparency report on Monday, revealing that the number of requests for user information in the second half of 2014 jumped 40% over the previous six months.
Twitter received 2,871 requests for 7,144 user accounts and cooperated with 52% of them. More than half of government requests came from the United States — up 29% from the first half of last year — but the company noted that it saw the biggest increases from Russia and Turkey. Russia, in fact, had never requested data about Twitter users but made 108 requests this time. The company did not cooperate with Russia and Turkey on any of their requests.
Twitter government transparency report is released twice a year and covers data requests from the governments of more than 45 countries, from Canada to Saudi Arabia to Japan, usually relating to criminal investigations.
Since Twitter began publishing the statistics in 2012, information requests have climbed more than threefold, which could be cause for concern depending on where you stand on privacy issues.
