Government requests for Facebook data up 24pc Facebook user data requests made by governments across the world increased by 24 per cent during the first six months of the year, in comparison with June - December 2013. The social network received a global total of 34,946 requests from governments between January and June, during which time the amount of content restricted due to local laws increased around 19 per cent, the social network said. "As we've said before, we scrutinise every government request we receive for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests," said Chris Sonderby, Facebook deputy general counsel in a blog post. Robert Hannigan said terrorists were embracing the internet and using it to intimidate people and inspire new recruits. Facebook said it had challenged bulk search warrants issued by a New York court demanding data from the accounts of 400 users - by far the largest the network has ever received. "We've argued that these overly broad warrants violate the privacy rights of the people on Facebook and ignore constitutional safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures," Mr Sonderby continued. Despite a setback in the lower court, we're aggressively pursuing an appeal to a higher court to invalidate these sweeping warrants and to force the government to return the data it has seized.