FB rejects HK govt's requests for user data in second half of 2020

Facebook has turned down every request from the Hong Kong government to view the data of users between July and December 2020 after the enforcement of the national security law. According to its Transparency Report, there were 202 requests in total made by the government, of which 201 were legal process requests. There was only one case pertaining to emergency disclosure, which Facebook said it rejected as well.

However, in the first half of 2020, Facebook received 262 requests from the government and Facebook produced data for 24% of these requests.

The company said government officials sometimes make requests for data about people who use Facebook as part of official investigations. The vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases and in many of these cases, these government requests seek basic subscriber information, such as name, registration date and length of service. Other requests may also seek IP address logs or account content.

Meanwhile, the requests do not only cover Facebook but also other platforms and services including Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and even Oculus.

Before the enforcement of the national security law, tech giants, including Facebook, Google and Twitter announced that they would pause processing data requests from the Hong Kong government as they said they needed to review the security law.

Also, globally, Facebook received 191,013 from governments from around the world between July and December 2020, up from 173,592 or 10% in H1 2020, and Facebook produced data for 72.3% of these requests.

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