The federal government is requesting more and more user information from Google, as can be seen from a statistical summary released by the firm. Google provided a list of each country with which has information disputes regarding information in the first six months of 2011.
This is the fourth six-month summary that Google has released. Previous summaries highlight a major confrontation with the communist government of China over online censorship. The current summary, released October 25, 2011, listed the total number of user accounts targeted. Previous summaries simply listed the number of requests from police, prosecutors, courts and other government agencies worldwide.
Google received at least 15,600 user data requests from January through June of 2011, involving at least 25,400 Google accounts. Such requests are up by ten percent over the last half of 2010. There are over 1 billion users of Google.
Google is an important caretaker of sensitive personal data since it supplies a dominant search engine that processes approximately two of every three online queries in the U.S. and an ever larger share of queries for parts of Europe. More information is garnered through its YouTube video service and its Gmail service. A social networking service has been launched by Google called "Plus," which already has 40 million accounts since its June launch as a competitor to Facebook.
Therefore Google is an important source of information for those fighting crime, terrorism and other activities.
Google also listed how many times governments sought to censor video on the company's widely watched YouTube video site or demanded some other piece of content be removed for reasons ranging from privacy concerns to laws prohibiting hate speech.
The volume of worldwide censorship demands from governments remained at roughly the same level it reached in the previous six months, although there were sharp spikes in some countries. In Britain, for instance, the government asked Google to remove 220 videos from YouTube during the first six months of this year, compared with 40 videos during the previous six months. The British government wanted most of the videos taken down for "national security" reasons.
Google declined to provide more details on the videos that the British government saw as
national security risks. Britain's Home Office would only say, "the government takes the threat of online extremism or hate content very seriously."
There were 5950 information requests from the U.S. (up 29% in six months), 1,739 from India (up 2%), 1,300 from France (up 27%), 1,273 requests from Britain (up 10%) and 1060 requests from Germany (up 38%).
The Google report also lists the number of times governments sought to censor YouTube videos. Overall such requests were flat, but Britain’s requests spiked to 220 video requests which were made for "national security" reasons.
The Google report shows that the company agreed to 82 percent f the British government’s requests for censorship. Google usually agrees to at least part of government demands. Google has stated that it must obey laws I the countries where it operates; on the other hand, Google shifted its Chinese search engine to Hong Kong last year to avoid mainland China’s censorship requirements.
Google honored 93% of U.S. requests and 70% of India’s requests but denied 68% of Argentina’s requests and denied more than 50% of requests from Canada, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey and South Korea.
The report is online at http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/ . Google hopes that by disclosing these government requests every six months it will encourage passage of new laws allowing the company more leverage to deny government access to users’ online communications and activities.
-- summarized from http://news.yahoo.com/google-faces-more-government-demands-user-224729741.html
This is the fourth six-month summary that Google has released. Previous summaries highlight a major confrontation with the communist government of China over online censorship. The current summary, released October 25, 2011, listed the total number of user accounts targeted. Previous summaries simply listed the number of requests from police, prosecutors, courts and other government agencies worldwide.
Google received at least 15,600 user data requests from January through June of 2011, involving at least 25,400 Google accounts. Such requests are up by ten percent over the last half of 2010. There are over 1 billion users of Google.
Google is an important caretaker of sensitive personal data since it supplies a dominant search engine that processes approximately two of every three online queries in the U.S. and an ever larger share of queries for parts of Europe. More information is garnered through its YouTube video service and its Gmail service. A social networking service has been launched by Google called "Plus," which already has 40 million accounts since its June launch as a competitor to Facebook.
Therefore Google is an important source of information for those fighting crime, terrorism and other activities.
Google also listed how many times governments sought to censor video on the company's widely watched YouTube video site or demanded some other piece of content be removed for reasons ranging from privacy concerns to laws prohibiting hate speech.
The volume of worldwide censorship demands from governments remained at roughly the same level it reached in the previous six months, although there were sharp spikes in some countries. In Britain, for instance, the government asked Google to remove 220 videos from YouTube during the first six months of this year, compared with 40 videos during the previous six months. The British government wanted most of the videos taken down for "national security" reasons.
Google declined to provide more details on the videos that the British government saw as
national security risks. Britain's Home Office would only say, "the government takes the threat of online extremism or hate content very seriously."
There were 5950 information requests from the U.S. (up 29% in six months), 1,739 from India (up 2%), 1,300 from France (up 27%), 1,273 requests from Britain (up 10%) and 1060 requests from Germany (up 38%).
The Google report also lists the number of times governments sought to censor YouTube videos. Overall such requests were flat, but Britain’s requests spiked to 220 video requests which were made for "national security" reasons.
The Google report shows that the company agreed to 82 percent f the British government’s requests for censorship. Google usually agrees to at least part of government demands. Google has stated that it must obey laws I the countries where it operates; on the other hand, Google shifted its Chinese search engine to Hong Kong last year to avoid mainland China’s censorship requirements.
Google honored 93% of U.S. requests and 70% of India’s requests but denied 68% of Argentina’s requests and denied more than 50% of requests from Canada, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey and South Korea.
The report is online at http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/ . Google hopes that by disclosing these government requests every six months it will encourage passage of new laws allowing the company more leverage to deny government access to users’ online communications and activities.
-- summarized from http://news.yahoo.com/google-faces-more-government-demands-user-224729741.html
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