Yahoo's latest transparency report highlights removal requests for Flickr, comments

Yahoo published its fifth transparency report on Thursday morning, highlighting a few of its notable rejections in India and the United Kingdom.

Covering the first six months of 2015, the document offers a glimpse into the number of requests for user data and content removal demanded by government agencies in the nations where Yahoo operates.

This includes National Security Letters (NSLs) and criminal data requests, including search warrants, court orders, and subpoenas issued in criminal investigations.

Worldwide, Yahoo received 15,583 requests for data, which concerned 25,986 accounts over the first half of the year. Of them, Yahoo declined to provide information to 4,993 requests.

In India, for example, Yahoo described it a request from an Indian law enforcement agency to remove an allegedly defamatory comment posted to a Yahoo Group. Yahoo followed up that it rejected the request because it did not include a legal justification nor did the comment did not violate Yahoo's Terms of Service.

Yahoo also received a request pertaining to its popular photo sharing subsidiary Flickr from a U.K. law enforcement agency, asking for the removal of nine images which the agency deemed as promoting terrorism.

However, Yahoo said it only removed one of them in deeming it to have violated Flickr's Community Guidelines, arguing the other eight images appeared to "expose and condemn violent extremism."

Following revelations about the National Security Agency's data-mining programs in June 2013, Yahoo began publishing transparency reports (much like Google and other tech giants before it) that September.

The most recent edition in March was a rather routine one in the grand scheme of things, depicting the United States as by far and away the leader in data requests, with the United Kingdom, Taiwan, France, Germany, and India also delving into the thousands.

That trend continued into the first half of 2015 as Yahoo received 5,221 data requests in the U.S. alone concerning 8,424 specific accounts. Yahoo asserted it rejected 304 of them, disclosing some content for at least 1,258 requests.

Aaron Altschuler, vice president and associate general counsel at Yahoo, stressed in a blog post that the search company is committed to "ending bulk data collection and significantly reforming U.S. government surveillance programs."