Google releases details about requests it receives for user data and censoring information. Brazil ranks highest in the list, followed by US and UK respectively. Google reveals that Brazil made 291 calls from July to December 2009 for removing content, followed by 188 from Germany, 142 from India and 123 from US.
David Drummond, the chief legal officer of Google, said that most of the requests are genuine and the information required is for reasonable criminal investigations or removing child pornography.
Google is going through a massive battle with China on the issues of censorship. Censorship of results were stopped in the earlier part of this year, as the Gmail accounts of people related to human rights groups got hacked. Google said that these attacks had their origins in China, while the country’s authorities refuted any such involvement.
The government’s request tool of Google was also released on the same day that the privacy commissioner of Canada sent a letter to Google concerning privacy issues. Authorities from ten other nations supported the complaint that was directly sent to Eric Schmidt, the boss of Google.
Google said that it discloses the information as per the principles laid down by Global Network Initiative. This is a group, which promotes freedom of expression over the Internet. Microsoft and Yahoo are also part of the group. On today’s date, 40 different governments censor information, while this number of just 4 in 2002.
Tom Krazit, Cnet.com, a technology news site, said, “Google’s numbers are not nearly as transparent as they could be.” The tool can be used for finding out how often Google complies with the take down requests, but it does not reveal how many time it complies or refuses requests for individuals’ information.
The next release is scheduled to be out in 6 months time, which will have a better kind of information from Google.
