Governments Who Request or Remove Data About Its Citizens

The Google Transparency Tool

Site:
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport

Per Google:

Transparency is a core value at Google. As a company we feel it is our responsibility to ensure that we maximize transparency around the flow of information related to our tools and services. We believe that more information means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.
We’ve created an interactive map of Government Requests that shows the number of government inquiries for information about users and requests for Google to take down or censor content. We hope this step toward greater transparency will help in ongoing discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests.
Our interactive Traffic graphs provide information about traffic to Google services around the world. Each graph shows historic traffic patterns for a given country/region and service. By illustrating outages, this tool visualizes disruptions in the free flow of information, whether it's a government blocking information or a cable being cut. We hope this raw data will help facilitate studies about service outages and disruptions.

Transparency Report: Government Requests

I used this tool to conduct some quick research and compared the first six months of 2010 data, to all of 2009 requests by governments to either collect information from Google on citizen posted data or to request data to be removed.

Should we be scared? Google's Transparency Tool makes it real and demonstrates that countries keep tabs on what their citizens are doing on the Internet.

The United States leads the list with over 4287 data requests from Google between January 2010 - June 2010.

Google Transparency Report For Government Data Requests on Their Citizens: For the First Six Months of 2010 Compared To All of 2009

The first 6 months of 2010 for 4 of the 5 top governments who request data on their citizens has already exceeded the total number requests they made for the entire year of 2009. See below.

Country	2010 Government Data Requests	2009 Government Data Requests	Change
United States	4287	3580	707
Brazil	2435	3663	-1228
India	1430	1061	136
United Kingdom	1343	1166	177
France	1017	846	171

Google Transparency Report For Government Data Removal Requests of Their Citizens Data: For the First Six Months of 2010 Compared To All of 2009

The number of requests to Google by governments to remove data is also increasing sharply. The United States is due to double the number of requests to remove information by the end of 2009

Country	2009 Data Removal Requests	2010 Data Removal Requests	Change
Brazil	291	398	107
Libya		149	149
United States	123	128	5
Germany	188	124	124
Italy	57	69	12
United Kingdom	123	48	-75

Complete list of government who request data from Google or Request that Google remove data.

Country	Data	Removal
China	?
United States	4287	128
Brazil	2435	398
India	1430	30
United Kingdom	1343	48
France	1017	25
Germany	668	124
Italy	651	69
Spain	372	16
Australia	200	14
South Korea	170	38
Argentina	134	12
Taiwan	130	11
Chile	115
Singapore	106
Portugal	73	<10
Belgium	71	<10
Japan	56	7
Turkey	51	5
Hong Kong	50	<10
Switzerland	35	5
Israel	30	4
Austria		2
Canada		<10
Cyprus		<10
Greece		<10
Kazakhstan		<10
Libya		149
Macedonia [FYROM]		<10
Malta		<10
Mexico		<10
Netherlands		<10
New Zealand		<10
Norway		<10
Puerto Rico		<10
Russia		<10
Solomon Islands		<10
Sweden		<10

I applaud Google for providing this tool for transparency purposes. It makes you wonder about the information being gathered or censored. Hmmm.

Enjoy,

Julius

Country	Data	Removal
China	?
United States	4287	128
Brazil	2435	398
India	1430	30
United Kingdom	1343	48
France	1017	25
Germany	668	124
Italy	651	69
Spain	372	16
Australia	200	14
South Korea	170	38
Argentina	134	12
Taiwan	130	11
Chile	115
Singapore	106
Portugal	73	<10
Belgium	71	<10
Japan	56	7
Turkey	51	5
Hong Kong	50	<10
Switzerland	35	5
Israel	30	4
Austria		2
Canada		<10
Cyprus		<10
Greece		<10
Kazakhstan		<10
Libya		149
Macedonia [FYROM]		<10
Malta		<10
Mexico		<10
Netherlands		<10
New Zealand		<10
Norway		<10
Puerto Rico		<10
Russia		<10
Solomon Islands		<10
Sweden		<10