Facebook Denies Giving User Data To Turkish Government

As if Facebook doesn’t have enough to deal with over NSA PRISM rumors, the social network is now adamantly denying that it handed over user data to Turkish government workers.

Facebook on Wednesday released a statement after a Turkish government minister claimed that Facebook was “in cooperation with the state.”

The same Turkish official also claimed that Twitter was refusing to supply user data.

Here is Facebook’s full statement regarding the Turkish data claim:

Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests. More generally, 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.

We are concerned about legislative proposals that might purport to require Internet companies to provide user information to Turkish law enforcement authorities more frequently. We will be meeting with representatives of the Turkish government when they visit Silicon Valley this week, and we intend to communicate our strong concerns about these proposals directly at that time.

Reuters later reported that Twitter has been in talks to setup an office in the country. That office would allow the Turkish government to work more closely with Twitter in the gathering of data. We already know Turkey’s Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, does not like Twitter, recently call the network a “curse” filled with lies.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently took to his personal Facebook page to adamantly deny his social networks involvement in the NSA PRISM program.

Do you think Facebook is cooperating with US and foreign government to supply user data upon request?