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Which World Governments Are Most Likely to Snoop on Your Facebook?


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Part of the map of Facebook security created by Anselm Bradford.

A map of Facebook security shows the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia have the highest rates of government surveillance of Facebook accounts.

Credit: Anselm Bradford

The United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia have the highest rates of government surveillance of Facebook accounts, according to a map of Facebook security created by New Zealand-based digital media lecturer and a 2013 Code for America fellow Anselm Bradford for this month's EU Hackathon.

To create the map, Bradford used information from Facebook's transparency report for the first six months of 2013, combined with other statistics. Each country's ranking is weighted by population, number of Facebook users, and frequency of official data demands. Bradford then estimated the amount of time that would pass before each nation's users have more than a 1-percent chance of their data being accessed by an intelligence or judicial agency.

The U.S. government led with 11,000 to 12,000 government requests for data, while Barbados, Japan, Russia, Uganda, Mongolia, Montenegro, and Botswana had very low rates of government snooping.

From Atlantic Cities
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Abstracts Copyright © 2013 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA


 

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