Google releases tool to show govt censorship requests

| Friday April 23, 2010 00:00

Tonight it released a web page with a map showing country by country where it has had government requests or court orders to remove content from the YouTube video service or its search results, or to provide details about users of its services.

The release of the tool, announced on its official blog, comes as it has had to counter complaints from data protection authorities in 10 countries, including the UK, that its Street View product, which provides pictures of public streets, and its ad-hoc social networking service Buzz 'were launched without due consideration of privacy and data protection laws' and that Buzz in particular 'betrayed a disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy norms'.

Details provided by Google cover requests between  July 1 and December 31, 2009, and show that in the UK there were 1,166 requests for data about users and 59 requests to remove web pages in Google's services such as YouTube, or from its search results for the web. It complied with 45, or 76%, of the 59 requests, of which 43 were about YouTube videos. It does not specify which government agency - such as the police or others - made the request.

Launching the new tool, Google says that 'We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship' and links to a list which already shows that Brazil, where Google's social network Orkut is hugely popular, leads the world with 291 removal requests - with Germany, India, the US, South Korea and the UK behind it. The 'censorship' numbers also include non-governmental court-ordered removal of sites or results for defamation or criminal proceedings - though the company will try to clarify that in future updates to the data, probably every six months.

However China has no listed requests - because, as the online tool explains, 'Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time.' If China were included it would almost certainly be in the top spot, because its government only allowed Google to operate inside the country if it hid thousands of web pages from search results.

Google portrayed the data release as part of its continuing championing of openness of information, which fits into its mission 'to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible'.  (THE GUARDIAN)