Pakistan’s Requests to Remove Twitter Accounts Doubled in Six Months: Nighat Dad

According to bi-annual transparency report of social media networking website, the number of requests made by Pakistani authorities to Twitter for removal of accounts and information has doubled since last year. Pakistan’s Requests to Remove Twitter Accounts Doubled in Six Months: Nighat Dad.

from January to June 30 the government asked Twitter to remove 24 accounts and around 80 were reported. Nighat Dad from Digital Right Foundation revealed that strict monitoring of Twitter and other social media sites is carried on.

Pakistan’s Requests to Remove Twitter Accounts Doubled in Six Months: Nighat Dad

Nighat also emphasized on trends in legal requests received by Twitter, intellectual property related requests and email privacy practices.

She said:

Several people reported that they had received notices from the Federal Investigation Agency regarding what they had posted on social media. While monitoring was a reality, Pakistan was following bad examples set by its neighbors as well as countries such as the US, Russia and Turkey.

According to report from January to June, India received two account removal requests from Court and more more than 100 from its government.

Last year India received one court account removal request, 96 by the government and agencies whereas 295 accounts were reported. Pakistan has zero court request, 13 account removal requests from government and agencies and just 19 accounts were reported.

Turkey received highest number of court ordered account removals i.e 715 request. Request to remove accounts from government was 1,995. Russia and France received 1,213 and 1,038 requests respectively.

Also Read: Twitter Disables Over 300,000 Accounts on Suspected Terrorism