A study published by Dutch cybersecurity company Surfshark has revealed that Belgium ranks 9th in worldwide government surveillance based on the number of accounts specified in data requests by local authorities and law enforcement agencies.
The government requested information from 248 accounts per 100,000 people in 2013-2020. Belgium made 270% more requests than the global average of 67 information requests per 100,000 people.
In total, information on over 5 million accounts was requested by 177 countries. The US and the EU obliged companies to provide the most information on users, making around two thirds of the total requests. The US requested more than doubled the accounts per 100,000 people then all other countries combined. Global trends reveal that the number of accounts requested has increased globally by more than four times since 2013.
In Belgium, there was a 176% increase in account requests made by Belgian authorities to global companies, or roughly 28,000 accounts in eight years. This trend is accelerating too. In Belgium, requested accounts grew by 38% in 2020, compared to the year before.
“The massive growth of line crime in 2020 went hand-in-hand with the increase in data requests that Big Tech companies received,” said Agneska Sablovskaja, lead researcher at Surfshark.
Certain corporations are much more likely to hand over user data than others. Apple complied with the most user data requests (80%), while Microsoft, Facebook, and Google complied with requests 69-72% of the time.
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“Globally, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a staggering year-over-year growth of accounts requested for government surveillance, from 0.9 million to 1.3 million. This could be attributed to everything moving online, including crime.”
In Belgium, the overall disclosure rate was 80%. In other words, four out of five times, when requested, Big Tech will hand over Belgians’ data to the government. The government gained information about around 23,000 accounts within the space of three years, with the government commonly demanding that Facebook and Microsoft turn over user data.
EU authorities may no longer need to even request user data. A European Commission proposal aims to “compel a broad range of technology companies to scan and analyse the messages, and DMs could all be subject to plain-text access and scanning.” Thereby, governments would no longer need to ask for user data. 100% of user accounts would be subject to government checks.
