Facebook reveals Egypt requests for account info

Egypt has requested information on 11 Facebook accounts during the first six months of 2013, according to Facebook's Global Government Requests Report published this week.

The report is the first of its kind from Facebook and shows that the Egyptian government has made eight requests to enquire about 11 accounts.

Toppled former Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi was still in power when the requests were made, according to local media.

Although Facebook did not say whether the requests were denied, a chart in the report showed the social media network did not release information to meet the government’s requests.

“As we have said many times, we believe that while governments have an important responsibility to keep people safe, it is possible to do so while also being transparent,” stated the report.

Facebook did not release data access to three requests made by Qatar as well, stated the report.

Among the 72 countries who submitted data requests to Facebook, the U.S. ranked first with 12,000 inquiries on around 21,000 Facebook users.

Facebook showed that it responded to 79 percent of the U.S.’s data requests.

Facebook also said it intends to release such reports regularly in the future.