Google announced today a new tool for tracking the number of times a government requests information from the Search Company. They make the distinction between the number of times that a government asks for information, and the number of times a government asks them to remove content from Google, Blogger, or YouTube. For the latter Google provides detailed statistics on where content was removed from, but they give no details on what types of information governments requested, nor do they disclose whether they complied with the government’s requests.
Firstly, let me say this is a huge step in the right direction for pressuring other Internet companies to reveal their relationships with national governments. Also, hopefully as more accurate information is released on Google there will be a clearer picture of governments (including the US government) prevalence to censor information and unlawfully request information without a warrant. The numbers that are currently available do not tell us for example how many people a government requests information on since sometimes a request is for multiple people, or multiple requests are for the same person. Still, Google has said that they will reveal more comprehensive statistics as time goes on. A new update is expected in 6 months (the current statistics are from the 6 month period between July 2009 and December 2009). Now that Google has stepped forward to help improve transparency regarding internet privacy and internet censorship, other internet giants will be pressured to do the same. Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T all hold a lot of user data on their serves that I’m sure the government finds valuable.
So how did the US fare in the newly released statistics? From a privacy standpoint, possibly shitty. The US has the second most requests at 3,580, following only Brazil, but without detailed information we can’t really evaluate their rate of censorship. Google has long been known to cooperate with the US government, and the statistics for the content removal requests support this assumption- Google cooperated with 80% of the US’s requests. The average percent of cooperation is around 75% however, so once again that statistic provides very little relevant information.
FAQ on the new tool, with a breakdown of what the statistics do and don’t mean.
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