Australian authorities asked tech companies for more user data last year than their counterparts in any other country barring the United States, a compilation of "transparency reports" reveals.

Australian authorities made 52,017 requests for user data from companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft - or 2870 for every million internet users.

Who's watching? The Australian government has made more requests for data from tech companies than any other government, after the US.

That was more than authorities in Germany, France and the UK but less than those in the US, which made a hefty 784,511 requests in total.

The figures are found in a new database created by online information-sharing site Silk, which groups all available transparency reports.