James Delahunty
27 Jun 2013 6:40
Facebook has denied claims made by a Turkish official that implied the social network was handing over user information to authorities in the country.
The Turkish government had blasted Twitter, with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan calling it a "scourge" that is used to spread lies about the government with the goal of terrorizing society in the country. It was requesting that Twitter setup a representative office within Turkey, apparently to make it easier to acquire information on users. For several weeks, Turks have been staging anti-government protests, largely organized through social media.
Transport and Communications Minister Binali Yildirim had made comments that seemed to suggest that Facebook had been cooperating with authorities, while he was blasting Twitter for not doing so. Not true, says Facebook.
"Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests. More generally, we reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child, which has been the case in only a small fraction of the requests we have received."