Government’s Efforts To Monitor Social Media Users Skyrocket

Major tech companies have shared data from over 3.5 million user accounts with the U.S. government between late 2024 and early 2025, according to a report from digital privacy firm Proton.

Proton’s report focuses on Apple, Google and Meta, and finds the 770% surge has occurred ever since the tech giants started to disclose government requests. Moreover, the total increases from 3.5 million accounts to 6.7 million accounts when accounting for disclosures under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) from 2014 to 2024.

The data sharing has increased under both parties, according to Bloomberg.

The number of disclosed accounts skyrocketed by 927% at Apple, 557% at Google and 668% at Meta over the course of the decade, according to Proton. Apple, Google and Meta shared data from over 282,000 American accounts during the first half of 2025.

Reported FISA content requests soared by 2,486% at Meta and 649% at Google between 2014 and 2024, according to Proton. They rose 443% between 2018 and 2024 at Apple, which lacks comparable data spanning back to 2014.

“The Trump administration continues to champion the right to privacy for Americans and American data by encouraging secure technologies and supply chains that protect user privacy from design to deployment,” a White House spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Critics have long scrutinized FISA amid allegations that the FBI has repeatedly abused the authority, which enables intelligence officials to surveil Americans without obtaining a warrant. FISA’s Section 702 permits intelligence agencies to gather incidental data on Americans while targeting foreign individuals, leading to concerns over improper spying on U.S. citizens.

Section 702 is slated to expire on April 20, but it is up for reauthorization, according to Bloomberg. President Donald Trump wrote in a March 25 Truth Social post that he supported an 18-month extension of FISA Section 702 that maintains reforms from the last reauthorization.

“It’s clear that the biggest tech companies are a frequent and growing target for government surveillance,” Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who has pushed for 702 reforms, told Bloomberg. “A handful of companies are collecting huge amounts of information about Americans’ lives, so it is natural that they are a tempting target for law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

“Unless Congress passes strong new guardrails to protect Americans’ rights, that information will inevitably be abused,” he added.

Meta told Bloomberg that although government requests have increased, its level of compliance has stayed steady.

“We safeguard our users with industry-leading encryption by default and offer advanced client-side encryption for organizations with strict data sovereignty needs,” a Google spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “When governments request information, we review every demand and regularly push back on those that are overly broad. We then share data about these requests publicly in our Transparency Report.”

Former President Joe Biden’s administration pushed Big Tech firms to suppress content during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, it pushed Facebook to censor posts about the pandemic that it deemed misinformation, according to documents published by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan in July 2023.

Apple and Meta did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s  request for comment.

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