Government performs Facebook checks

The Belgian government asked Facebook 150 times during the first half of this year for information about users of the social networking site, according to Facebook's first 'Global Government Requests Report', published Tuesday. The 150 applications were all related to users in Belgium. Facebook is often asked to reply to questions from the Belgian authorities and, in 70 percent of the cases, it furnishes at least some of the requested information. The number of applications from the Belgian government is remarkably high compared to, for example, the Netherlands, which only requested information from Facebook 11 times in the first half of this year. The country to submit the highest number of requests so far to Facebook is the United States (11,000 to 12,000), followed by India (3,245) and the UK (1,975). In total, the 'Global Government Requests Report' listed 71 countries, representing more than 25,000 applications submitted on nearly 38,000 user accounts.