Twitter releases "transparency tool" to reveal government requests

In the vein of what Google has done for a few years now, Twitter released a “transparency tool” on Monday. The company showed the public for the first time exactly how many times governments ask for user information or ask for content to be taken down. The tool also shows how many DMCA takedown requests are made. The new tool's release comes on the same day that a New York criminal judge denied Twitter's motion to quash a subpoena request for an Occupy Wall Street protestor's data.

Not surprisingly, requests from the United States government top the list, coming in at 679 (out of 849 requests made in 2012). Twitter complied in whole or in part with 75 percent of those requests. The report shows that the company did not comply with any government content removal requests. The transparency tool measures requests between January 1, 2012 and June 30, 2012.