We all want to feel safe and secure. If people are discussing how to make a bomb or overthrow a government, we would like the proper authorities to be made aware. But does that mean that you have to be careful of every single word that you write?

Social media is just that. It is a way for people to connect with each other, discuss what is going on that day and basically just be social. So why does the government want to know what you discussions are about? I should say “governments” because this is a global occurrence.

On August 27, 2013, Facebook (News - Alert) released the results of its “Global Government Requests Report.” It lists 70 countries along with the total requests, users / accounts requested and percentage of requests where some data was produced.

The new report from Facebook begins with the following sentences, “Transparency and trust are core values at Facebook. We strive to embody them in all aspects of our services, including our approach to responding to government data requests. We want to make sure that the people who use our service understand the nature and extent of the requests we receive and the strict policies and processes we have in place to handle them.”

According to Facebook’s report, at least 25,607 orders were put in for 37,954 separate accounts for the first six months of this year. Of these requests almost half came from the U.S. Facebook says that no country had all of its requests honored. However, if you look at the breakdown of figures, a lot of them are pretty high.

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The U.S. had 11,000 - 12,000 total requests and 20,000 - 21,000 users / accounts requested. Of this a total of 79 percent were honored, as the report states, at least in part. The U.K. was slightly lower with a total of 68 percent being honored.

India made an average of 18 user data requests to Facebook on a daily basis. Turkey made 96 requests on 170 users. Although the report shows that 47 percent were honored, it seems that the full story is a little ambiguous.

Facebook did say "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."

One problem with being able to determine the exact figures for the U.S. is that there are gag orders associated with FBI national security letters. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court requests make it difficult to talk about many orders at all. Facebook was only allowed to start mentioning them in ranges in June.

Keeping in mind that the NSA has broad access to information from almost every tech giant, lifting the veil on how often user data is given up has become simply good business practice for anyone whose success rests on keeping the public trust.