India requests Twitter to withhold content: transparency report

Twitter has released its biannual transparency report for the time period Jan-June,2013. The report which twitter has been releasing regularly since July,2012 gives useful insights into data removal requests and information requests made by different countries to Twitter. Twitter also gives a low down on copyright notices served by them. This time India along with the Netherlands,Brazil,Russia and Japan has joined the list of the countries at whose request content was withheld by Twitter.

Total 3 tweets were withheld at the request made by India-of which one request was made by the government/ government agency/police and the other by a court order. However of fewer than 10 requests that India made during the specified time period to seek information on certain accounts,0% requests were honoured by Twitter for reasons such as the request failed to identify the twitter account or requests were overly broad or in cases where Twitter notified the user of the information request,user was successfully able to challenge it.

Internationally content removal requests have significantly increased from a mere 6 in Jan-June 2012 to 60 in Jan-Jun 2013. Twitter has provided with details of the kind of content removal requests that were made by countries such as Japan,Russia,France and Brazil but no information could be found on India and the Netherlands in the report.