Governments Ramp Up Facebook Monitoring

The government may be watching what you do on Facebook. A new report reveals governments around the world are requesting more data for surveillance and restricting more and more Facebook content.

That news comes in Facebook's Global Government Requests Report for the first half of 2015.

The company reports an 18 percent rise in government requests for information in 2015, rising from 35,051 requests to 41,214.

And there was a 112 percent spike in countries restricting Facebook content that violated local law -- 20,568 such incidents, up from 9,707.

But Facebook Deputy General Counsel Chris Sonderby says the company does not just hand over material or do whatever governments ask, even the U.S. and European governments.

"We scrutinize each request we receive for legal sufficiency," he said. "If a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back hard and will fight in court, if necessary."

Sonderby says the social media giant is not just handing over your information without a fight.

"Facebook does not provide any government with 'back doors' or direct access to people's data," he said.