"Google received multiple requests from law enforcement agencies to remove videos allegedly depicting police brutality or the defamation of police officers. Google says it declined these requests."

From:
ARS Technica
By Timothy B. Lee

For the last two years, Google has released comprehensive reports twice a year on the frequency of takedown requests and government data requests received in countries around the world. The latest data, released on Tuesday, focuses on the first half of 2011.

The statistics show that the United States continues to lead the world in snooping on Google users. US law enforcement made 5,950 separate requests for user data from 11,057 user accounts. Google complied with the requests 93 percent of the time. This was an almost 40 percent increase in the number of requests compared to the same period a year earlier. On a per capita basis, France (1,300 requests) and the United Kingdom (1,273 requests) were on par with the United States. Other nations were far behind.

Brazil and Germany were the leading nations for takedowns. Thanks in part to the popularity of Orkut in Brazil, Google fielded 224 requests to remove 689 items from Google services in Brazil. Germany received 125 requests to remove 2,405 items—1,585 of which were related to allegedly defamatory search results.

The report gives us a glimpse of how Google deals with censorious laws around the world. In the United States, Google received multiple requests from law enforcement agencies to remove videos allegedly depicting police brutality or the defamation of police officers. Google says it declined these requests.

In India, Google was asked to remove YouTube videos that "displayed protests against social leaders or used offensive language in reference to religious leaders." Google says it declined to remove most of the videos, but blocked access within India in cases where local law requires it. Google also says it declined a request to "remove 236 communities and profiles from Orkut that were critical of a local politician."

Google was asked to remove blog posts and videos that "documented details about the private lives of political officials" in Turkey; it restricted Turkish visitors from accessing some of the content. Similarly, Google restricted Thai users from accessing videos that "allegedly insulted the monarchy in violation of Thailand's lèse-majesté law."

The report reflects Google's scorched-earth policy towards China after last year's Gmail hacking incident. Google received just three takedown requests in the world's most populous nation, and complied with two of them (both related to AdWords). Google says it did not disclose any private user data to the Chinese government during the first half of 2011.

There's a huge disparity in the volume of requests Google fields in different parts of the world. Japan is an extreme example. In this democratic nation of 127 million, Google fielded just 75 user data requests and zero takedown requests. The huge gap between Japan and major Western nations may partly reflect differences in Google's user base (Google declined to give us statistics about its popularity in Japan) but it probably also reflects legal and cultural differences between Japan and Western nations.

It's important to reiterate a point made to us by Chris Soghoian when we covered Google's previous data release: while Google's release of data is laudable, it lets us see only a small fraction of government surveillance activities. Most Google competitors do not disclose comparable statistics.

Moreover, major telecommunication firms such as AT&T and Verizon have kept surveillance statistics close to their vests, and Soghoian says that those firms field tens of thousands of requests per year. And as Ryan Singel points out, even Google's own statistics are incomplete. Singel says they exclude national security letters and requests authorized by the secret FISA court—requests that often come with gag orders preventing public disclosure of their existence.

So Google's disclosures are better than nothing, and the Internet giant deserves credit for nudging the industry towards greater transparency. But meaningful transparency regarding government surveillance will require both greater industry participation and reform of US surveillance law to permit disclosure of all categories of surveillance requests.

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