Our latest Transparency Report provides insight into the nature and extent of government requests we receive for user data and the proactive efforts we’ve taken to protect intellectual property. This year marks 10 years since our first transparency report, which focused on government requests for user data. Over the last decade, we’ve added new reports, such as the Community Standards Enforcement Report (also published today for Q1 2023), which provides data on how we take action against violating content across our platforms. 

Government Requests for User Data

During the second half of 2022, global government requests for user data increased 0.8%  from 237,414 to 239, 388. The US continues to submit the largest number of requests of that total volume, followed by India, Germany, Brazil, France and the UK.

In the US, we’ve received 64,148  requests — a drop of 7.5% — from the last half of 2022. Non-disclosure orders prohibiting Meta from notifying the user remained stable at 71.1%. Additionally, as a result of transparency updates introduced in the 2016 USA Freedom Act, the US government lifted non-disclosure orders on 10 National Security Letters, which we received between 2016 and 2021. These requests, along with the US government’s authorization letters, are available below. 

As we have said in prior reports, we always scrutinize every government request we receive to make sure it is legally valid, no matter which government makes the request. We comply with government requests for user information only where we have a good-faith belief that the law requires us to do so. In addition, we assess whether a request is consistent with internationally recognized standards on human rights, including due process, privacy, free expression and the rule of law. When we do comply, we only produce information that is narrowly tailored to that request. If we determine that a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back and will fight in court, if necessary. We do not provide governments with “back doors” to people’s information. For more information about how we review and respond to government requests for user data and the safeguards we apply, please refer to our FAQs.

As part of our commitment to provide users with notice, we applaud the U.S. House of Representatives for unanimously passing the NDO Fairness Act, and urge the Senate  to introduce and approve it so that it can be enacted into law. This bill would make important reforms to the law governing the issuance of non-disclosure orders by providing courts with a robust standard for assessing and approving government secrecy requests.

Intellectual Property