Governments Made 6,000-Plus Requests for User Information, Twitter Reports

Twitter received more than 6,000 government requests globally for informati​on targeting more than 11,400 accounts during the second half of 2016, it reported Tuesday. That's a 7 percent increase over the prior six-month reporting period, but it affected 13 percent fewer accounts. Three new countries -- Guatemala, Taiwan and Ukraine -- were added to the list. The U.S. made the most requests of any government, about 2,300 targeting more than 5,600 accounts. The company said its latest report shows "modest growth" due to decrease in total requests from the U.S. and France. Twitter said it didn't comply at all or only partially with 39 percent of all global requests. It provided noncontent information -- such as email address, phone number associated with the account or to/from information of a direct message -- in 88 percent of the cases, and content information, which is the contents of the communications, in 11 percent of the cases, similar to the previous reporting period.