Google Reports Surge in Government Requests for User Data

http://ow.ly/79RL1

An article published by the Wall Street Journal, written by Tom Loftus.

This article discusses the U.S. government, and their requests for information regarding Google users.

The article notes, "U.S. government requests for data on Google users for the first half of 2011 increased 29% over the previous six-month time frame, according to a report released by Google today.

Government agencies and courts sent a total of 5,950 user data requests between January 1 and June 30, 2011, covering 11,057 separate users and accounts. Google said that it fully or partially complied with 93% of them."

The article further indicates, "...requests by the U.S. government to remove content from Google products also jumped–to 92, a 59% increase. The majority of requests, which targeted 757 items, involved alleged defamation, found either in Google’s Web search results, Google groups, YouTube or in Blogger, the search giant’s blogging platform. Google chose to comply with 63% of the requests."

A link to The Google Transparency Report is provided in the article, and the author makes it clear that the Report is not limited to U.S. actions.  The article discusses requests from the government of France, the UK, China, Thailand and India as well. 

In addition, the article mentions, "The transparency report also features information on traffic patterns, indicating when and where Google service access was limited. The January to June period dovetails with a portion of the Arab Spring where governments moved to block Internet access in order to forestall protest movements. The report shows that Egypt, Myanmar, Libya, Uzbekistan and Libya all Internet outages spawned by government actions."