Facebook received 10,000 data requests during July to December 2012

Facebook received 10,000 data requests during July to December 2012Social networking giant, Facebook has received about 9,000-10,000 data requests from various from US government entities during the second half of 2012.

The company said that the request were relating to issues from petty crime to national security. The requests were relating to 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts on the social network. Released data has shown that the US government is running a much larger electronic spying operation than anticipated. The government runs its programme to track terrorist and prevent attacks.

Facebook's Ted Ullyot pointed out that ests pertained to a wide range of investigations, including missing children, federal fugitives, local petty crimes and terrorist threats in the country. He said that the company aggressively protected its users' data but did not announce up-to what extent had fulfilled the requests.

"We frequently reject such requests outright, or require the government to substantially scale down its requests, or simply give the government much less data than it has requested," he said.

Meanwhile, it is believed that internal companies have entered into an agreement with the US government to release limited information about the number of surveillance requests.