Elon Musk’s X refused to hand over hundreds of account details to British authorities during and after last summer’s riots, as the US billionaire attacked the Government for imprisoning people for social media posts. The Telegraph has the story.
Figures published by X, formerly known as Twitter, showed that the company refused over half of UK Government information requests in the second half of 2024.
It handed over information in 379 out of 806 cases, a 47% disclosure rate. The rate is significantly lower than those of Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn.
The figures cover requests from police and other law enforcement agencies, and can include data such as people’s email, internet addresses and an account’s private messages.
The data covered July and August’s riots, when dozens of people were arrested for social media posts and some received prison sentences.
During the summer, Mr Musk compared Britain to the Soviet Union and accused the newly elected Labour Government of “censorship”.
In January, he wrote: “At this rate, the UK Government will pretty soon be executing people for liking a meme!”
Police routinely ask social media companies to hand over information to assist in law enforcement investigations, often to help identify anonymous accounts or see who they might be communicating with.
Legal teams at the companies assess the requests, and can reject them if they are seen as overly broad or legally dubious. A small number are made as emergency requests, where police consider there is an imminent threat.
X’s legal website says it “may seek to narrow requests that are overly broad, request additional context if the nature of the investigation is not clear, or push back on the request for other reasons”.
Worth reading in full.
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As a matter of interest, how many requests did Two-Tier Plod submit to X re BLM, Just Stop Oil, Stonewall, the River to the Sea Mob, etc, etc, etc?
I think it is a round figure.
And how are Ld Pearson’s questions to HoL going? The subject matter was treatment of prisoners; the target was to pin HMG to the floor over their treatment of our very own Alexandr ‘Tommy’ Navalny
Didn’t Wan kier mutter something about ‘a long history of FreeSpeech in our country’ a few days ago?
Hmm.
All these privacy regulations that have been introduced over the last few years which make going to any webpage for the first time cumbersome and annoying, those regulations that impose data treatment rules on companies supposedly to protect our privacy and our data, they apply to everyone… except the state and its thugs (the police) who think they can demand anyone’s data at any time. You know, to protect the public from hate and radicalised and misinformation etc
Thank God got the first amendment of the US constitution. I’m pretty sure it’s the last substantial thing left standing in the world that is a significant protection of freedom. If that ever goes, that’s it.
Just do what local authorities and the government does when they get a freedom of information request they don’t like – shred or deny the information exists. I know this is fact as I have witnessed it.
test
You always know who are the ones lying to you. They are the ones who try to cover up and silence you. Europe and the UK and its bought and paid for media has tried to present a rosy multicultural success story, but the truth is the very opposite and that is why X is despised by the Political Class of charlatans that work for the UN and WEF rather than the people who vote for them. All you need to do is look at the fact that data regarding nationality of perpetrators of crime are not available. —WHY?
We are the most surveilled society in the world, as a gift from that bastion of moral rectitude Tony Blair and yet the Police are unable or unwilling to catch thieves, Rapists, Paedophiles, and the big one Terrorists, oh and lets not forget the Rape Torture gangs, don’t tell me there isn’t tonnes of footage of young girlsbeing pushed and transported in taxis and vans.
So geunine crime goes on relentlessly, but say something about how the Government is not dealing with it, say something hurty or dare mention the ethnicity/ Religious base of the Rapist, torturer, the murderer of little girls and the Police are on it. But if you want to send films of beheadings etc thats ok
We are worse than the Stasi, they saw only black and white, if you behaved against their diktats you were sent to the Gulag, there was no get out of jail for religious or ethnic persuasion, so it could be argued that this Government is worse in its selective inflictment of thought crimes
What a parlous state of affairs when Elon Musk is obliged to protect our right to free speech against our own British “leaders”!
The gov’t can measure success by how many more used Tesla EV’s enter the market.
Well done to Elon Musk!