Government Information Requests
Summary
WordPress.com routinely receives requests for information about our users from government agencies around the world. In emergency cases, when permitted by law, we may voluntarily disclose limited user data. In all other cases, we do not voluntarily grant government agencies access to user data for law enforcement, intelligence, or surveillance purposes. We will only disclose user information in response to valid legal process, issued by a U.S. authority. The scope of user information disclosed is dependent on the type of legal process received. For more information on our requirements for information requests, please see our legal guidelines.
Evaluating Government Information Requests
We will disclose user information only in response to valid legal process such as a subpoena, search warrant, or court order issued by a U.S. authority, in accordance with the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and/or California state law.
We carefully review all legal process we receive to ensure it is complete and valid. We are unable to process overly broad or vague requests for information. The request must specifically include identifying information such as the relevant URL, email address, or username at issue. For more information on our requirements for information requests and what data may be disclosed, please refer to our legal guidelines.
Additionally, if a request or inquiry highlights a potential violation of our policies or Terms of Service, we will review it in accordance with our standard enforcement procedures.
Emergency Requests
As permitted by US law, we may voluntarily disclose user information to government or law enforcement agencies if we have a good faith belief that there is an emergency involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury which requires disclosure of information related to the emergency without delay.
For detailed information about emergency requests, and how an emergency request can be submitted, please refer to our legal guidelines.
User notification
It is our policy to notify users, and provide them with a copy of any legal requests regarding their account or site (including formal requests for private information), unless we are prohibited by law or a court order from doing so.
You can learn more about our policies and procedures for handling government, and private information requests in our legal guidelines.
Notes
- We also receive requests for user information from non-governmental sources, such as litigants in civil proceedings. Those requests are not included in this transparency report.
- We may receive requests that do not clearly identify a site or user as required by our legal guidelines, which may cause the reported site count to differ from the actual number of sites involved in a request.
- We may receive requests identifying the same site across multiple report periods. In this circumstance, the site is included in the specified site total for each report period.
- As of January 1, 2024 we expanded our transparency report data categories to fulfill the requirements of the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
| Country | Number of requests | Percentage of requests where some or all information was produced | Number of sites specified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Canada | 1 | 0% | 4 |
| France | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| India | 5 | 0% | 5 |
| Italy | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Germany | 2 | 0% | 2 |
| Latvia | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Pakistan | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Portugal | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Sweden | 1 | 0% | 2 |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 0% | 3 |
| United States | 20 | 60% | 29 |
| Total | 36 | 33% | 51 |
Recent Examples
Here are a few recent examples of requests for user information that we received from government sources. We did not provide information in response to any of these requests.
Canada
- Canadian law enforcement requested a user’s information in connection with a site’s alleged defamation of a government official.
Germany
- German law enforcement requested user information relating to a criminal investigation of § 130 German Criminal Code.
India
- A law enforcement agency based in Mumbai requested the release of a user’s information and the removal of a site due to alleged defamation.
- Law enforcement requested information about the owner of a site that was critical of a local politician.
Latvia
- Latvian law enforcement requested user information for all of the subscribers to a particular WordPress.com site.
Government Takedown Demands
Summary
WordPress.com routinely receives content removal requests from governments and law enforcement agencies worldwide. These requests may allege that the reported content is in violation of local law(s), or the agency may ask us to review the reported content against WordPress.com policies or Terms of Service. The Transparency Report contains data on all government agency removal requests for each 6 month period.
Evaluating Government Takedown Requests
We carefully review all government takedown requests, and are unable to process overly broad or vague requests. Court orders must be submitted in accordance with our legal guidelines, and takedown requests must clearly identify the content in question.
We first review any reported content in accordance with our policies or Terms of Service. The percentage of requests where content was removed does not include cases where content was removed for violating our policies or Terms of Service.
We do not remove reported content if it does not violate our policies or Terms of Service, however we may restrict content where it is alleged to be in violation of local law(s). See the Content Restrictions section below for more information.
Content Restrictions
When we receive a government-mandated demand or order to block access to content in a country due to alleged violation of local law(s), but the content does not breach WordPress.com policies or Terms of Service, we may geographically restrict access to that content for users and visitors with IP addresses originating from that country. For more details about takedown demands that result in geoblocking, see our country blocks page.
Where content has been geographically restricted, we provide users of the affected URL or site with a notification that the content has been restricted, the impacted country, and the authority that requested the content block.
Notes
- As of January 1, 2024 we expanded our transparency report data categories to fulfill the requirements of the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
- Government takedown requests may target multiple links, sites, or related content. The percentage of reported content that is removed is calculated at the request level, where some content was removed, not the percentage of links removed.
| Country | Court orders | Requests from government agencies or law enforcement | Percentage of requests where content was removed | Number of sites specified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| France | 1 | 0 | 0% | 1 |
| Germany | 1 | 3 | 0% | 6 |
| India | 0 | 3 | 0% | 3 |
| Italy | 0 | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Netherlands | 1 | 0 | 0% | 1 |
| Russia | 0 | 8 | 88% | 8 |
| United Kingdom | 0 | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| United States | 1 | 2 | 0% | 3 |
| Total | 4 | 18 | 32% | 24 |
Recent Examples
Here are a few recent examples of takedown demands that we received:
Russia
- We received eight orders from the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) for content that was deemed to be in violation of Russian Federal Law 139. We provided a copy of each Roskomnadzor order received to the Chilling Effects database, and you can access them here.
United States
- We received a request from a State’s Attorney to remove a site due to allegedly defamatory material regarding a county physician. We did not remove the site.
- We received a request from law enforcement to remove a site that had allegedly posted an appointed official’s personal information. We did not remove the site.
National Security
The table below summarizes the National Security Requests we received during the six-month periods between January 1, 2010 – Dec 31, 2013. “National Security Requests” include National Security Letters and FISA court orders.
| Six-month period | National Security Requests received | User accounts affected |
|---|---|---|
| 2013: Jul 1 – Dec 31 | None. | None. |
| 2013: Jan 1 – Jun 30 | 1-249 | 5-249 |
| 2012: Jul 1 – Dec 31 | 2-249 | 9-249 |
| 2012: Jan 1 – Jun 30 | None. | None. |
| 2011: Jul 1 – Dec 31 | None. | None. |
| 2011: Jan 1 – Jun 30 | None. | None. |
| 2010: Jul 1 – Dec 31 | None. | None. |
| 2010: Jan 1 – Jun 30 | 2-249 | 2-249 |
We are pleased to report that we received no National Security Requests in 2011.
For other periods, we don’t think the disclosures allowed by current Justice Department rules allow us to paint a truthful picture. Reporting National Security Requests in bands of 250 obfuscates rather than clarifies the volume of National Security Requests we and other small tech companies receive. While the disclosure regime may work well for larger companies with a high volume of requests (like the ones that worked with the Justice Department to craft these rules), they do not work well for smaller companies like Automattic.
By preventing us from sharing a more precise number of requests, the current disclosure rules diminish the trust that our users place in us and our services. For now, we are disclosing the maximum amount of information allowed by law.
It is our policy to invoke the “reciprocal notice” procedure in 18 U.S.C. § 3511 for any National Security Letters (NSLs) served on Automattic. This process ensures that a court will review all nondisclosure restrictions issued with NSLs we may receive. If and when a nondisclosure restriction is lifted, our policy is to share the contents of the NSL with any affected users (where possible), and publish a redacted version of the NSL.
Based on our correspondence with the U.S. government, we’ve developed a form reciprocal notice request here in Google Docs format. If your company has received an NSL in the past, and you would like the government to review the letter’s nondisclosure requirement, this form may be useful to you.
Automattic Transparency Reports 