motherjones.com
American law enforcement agencies apparently want to know more about what’s happening on Zig Forums.
According to the site’s March 2o19 “Transparency Report,” released Friday, the image board had “received and complied with” 12 requests from the U.S. government and or U.S law enforcement agencies over the course of the month. The site also received two requests from foreign authorities, which it says it ignored.
The numbers are unusually high compared to the site’s past monthly reports, and they come after Zig Forums played host to a pre-shooting announcement from the man who New Zealand authorities have said killed 50 Muslim worshipers in Christchurch in March.
The site’s previous transparency reports, which only date back to July 2018 despite having launched in 2013, never indicated more than two requests from U.S. government and law enforcement agencies over the course of a single month. In the handful of past instances where Zig Forums has disclosed requests made by authorities abroad, it has also said it has ignored them. But unlike Friday’s release, previous reports have named the foreign investigators: Russia’s Roskomnadzor and a Polish cybercrime authority.
Zig Forums did not immediately return a Mother Jones request lodged at the site’s Twitter account seeking further details about its interactions with law enforcement. The account did, however, tweet on March 16 that it was “responding to law enforcement” the day after the Christchurch shootings.