Probably not surprising to anyone who prefers metallic headwear: government requests for Twitter users' account information has been on the rise ever since the short-winded social network started publishing this data in July of 2012. Since then, government or law enforcement requests for information have jumped up by 20% in the past six months from 849 to 1009. In 69% of those requests July and December, Twitter willingly handed over information. 75% of the time, affected users were never notified that Twitter had received a request for their account information.

Twitter's official policy is to notify users when a government or law enforcement agency has made a request, but 20% of the requests are issued under seal — meaning a court has legally prohibited them from telling you that they've been digging around those illicit DMs you've been sending. (If you're not sending illicit DMs or planning a revolution, you're probably not using Twitter right.) Another 56% were not under seal, but users weren't notified either because the request was improper or because they determined it was a potentially life-threatening emergency. [Note: see update below for break down.]

The vast majority (about 80%) of information requests comes from the U.S., which Twitter says is because they're located in San Francisco. If you're paranoid or just finished the latest season of Homeland, you might also assume that's actually because literally anyone in America could be a terrorist. As one former CIA analyst-turned-tech consultant told the New York Daily News, "I would strongly suspect that they have much better access than we are hearing [...] Twitter is definitely being monitored. Anything out there I’d take with a grain of salt. Anyone posing as a terrorist could really be an intelligence expert.”

So, if you needed one, now you have a good reason not to tweet with terrorists.

Copyright notices, on the other hand, remained pretty constant around 3,300 notices sent — most of those being Cease and Desist requests from movie studios asking Twitter to take down tweets linking to pirated movie sites.

Update Jan. 31: We heard back from Twitter on at least one clarification. Of the 56% of information requests that were not under seal, but did not require notifying users: 10% were determined to be emergencies.

[Twitter Blog]
[NYDaily]