Facebook Reveals Search Warrants of Data Collection Requests

Facebook is receiving hundreds of search warrants of data collection of its hundreds of user’s accounts for their personal digital information. The social media giant Facebook was under a gag order of the court until it revealed the requests of hundreds of search warrants in order to go through the user’s account to monitor their personal information on the service. According to the data that Facebook revealed on Thursday, the service is fighting a court order that requires it to disclose the social media information of its hundreds of user accounts. Chris Sonderby, Facebook’s deputy general counsel wrote in a statement on newsroom of Facebook. “Since last summer, we’ve been fighting hard against a set of sweeping search warrants issued by a court in New York that demanded we turn over nearly all data from the accounts of 381 people who use our service, including photos, private messages and other information.” He further stated that “This unprecedented is by far the largest we’ve ever received-by a magnitude of more than ten-and we have argued that it was unconstitutional from the start.” The logical reason behind such massive search warrants is obvious that in such a digital age concerns also arise from the use and the search warrants are also necessary in order to conduct the investigation or monitor the services when much of the sensitive information of a person is online. But there are also some threats that people may or may not misuse the sensitive information of the users. This week Supreme Court of U.S. unanimously rejected the request of law enforcement authorities about the warrantless search of cell phones, by saying that the practice is against the Fourth Amendment of protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The court further added that the modern cell phones are “not just another technological evidence”. The post of Facebook also asserted that the search was “overly broad” and it allowed the government to seize the photos, private messages and other information of the users indefinitely. And it has called for the government to return the seized data i.e. photos, message and other sensitive information and also claimed that the search ignored the Fourth Amendment. Facebook isn’t the only social network which is facing such issues; in fact Google and Apple is also receiving the request from government bodies to disclose the information. According to Facebook they have received almost 12600 requests from the law enforcement bodies just from July to December 2013. And some of the data was also produced by Facebook against the requests and the ratio of the produced data is almost 81 percent.