[Vision2020] So Much For The First Amendment

[Art Deco]

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<http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/18/tech/web/google-transparency-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t1#>
<http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/18/tech/web/google-transparency-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t1#>
<http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/18/tech/web/google-transparency-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t1#>
Google reports 'alarming' rise in government censorship requests
 [image: John D. Sutter, CNN]
  By *John D. Sutter*, CNN
updated 12:31 PM EDT, Mon June 18, 2012 | Filed under:
Web<http://www.cnn.com/TECH/web/archive/>
  [image: Google says government requests to take down content are up
compared with last year.]

*(CNN)* -- Western governments, including the United States, appear to be
stepping up efforts to censor Internet search results and YouTube videos,
according to a "transparency
report"<http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/>released by Google.

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because
some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect -- Western
democracies not typically associated with censorship," Dorothy Chou, a
senior policy analyst at Google, wrote in a blog
post<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/more-transparency-into-government.html>on
Sunday night.

"For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us
to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in
newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and
public prosecutors. In Poland, we received a request from a public
institution to remove links to a site that criticized it. We didn't comply
with either of these requests."

In the last half of 2011, U.S. agencies asked Google to remove 6,192
individual pieces of content from its search results, blog posts or
archives of online videos, according to the report. That's up 718% compared
with the 757 such items that U.S. agencies asked Google to remove in the
six months prior.
 Fighting the great firewall

Overall, Google received 187 requests from United States law enforcement
agencies and courts to remove content from its Web properties from July to
December, up 103% from the 92 requests the Mountain View, California,
company received in the previous reporting period.

In one incident cited in the report, a U.S. law enforcement agency asked
Google to take down a blog that "allegedly defamed a law enforcement
official in a personal capacity." The company did not comply with that
request.

In another, a separate law enforcement group asked Google to take down
1,400 YouTube videos (Google owns YouTube) because of "alleged harassment."

And in Canada, the passport office asked Google to delete a YouTube video
"of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the
toilet," according to the report.

The tech company did not oblige either of those requests but did comply at
least in part with 42% of the removal requests from the United States in
the last half of 2011, the report
says<http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government/US/?p=2011-12>.
That number is down considerably compared to previous reports; In the
latter half of 2010, for example, Google said it complied with 87% of U.S.
requests to remove content.

The biannual transparency report, which includes data to July 2009, also
indicates a rise in world governments' requests to take a look at the data
Google collects about its users. And with those requests, Google tended to
be much more likely to comply.

In the last half of 2011, Google received 6,321 requests for user data from
government agencies in the United States and complied at least in part with
93% of them, according to data released in the
report<http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/>
.

Those requests for information about Google users come as part of criminal
investigations, Google says, and are not unique to the company.

Google complied more frequently with U.S.-based requests for information
about users than with requests from other countries, according to the
report. It complied or partially complied with only 24% of such requests
from Canada, 44% from France and 64% from the United Kingdom, for example.

The number of user data requests Google received from the United States was
up 6% over the previous six-month period and 37% compared with the last
half of 2010.

Google says this increase "isn't surprising, since each year we offer more
products and services, and we have a larger number of users." In the
report, the company
adds<http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US/?p=2011-12>:
"We review each request to make sure that it complies with both the spirit
and the letter of the law, and we may refuse to produce information or try
to narrow the request in some cases."

Writing at Forbes.com, tech columnist Andy Greenberg
says<http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/06/17/u-s-government-requests-for-google-users-private-data-spike-37-in-one-year/>that
Google "should be applauded for taking a strong stand against
censorship" but that "the government's increasingly sticky fingers in
Google's databases comes at a sensitive time."

"Google has been criticized for failing to reveal much about its reported
partnership with the National Security Agency following a Chinese attack on
its systems in 2010," he writes. "And the company has yet to take a stand
on the House's recently-passed Cyber Infrastructure Security and Protection
Act or its equivalents in the Senate, which are designed to give companies
far more leeway to hand data over to government agencies for security
purposes."

At Politico, blogger Dylan Byers says the
report<http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/06/us-increases-internet-removal-requests-126438.html>"will
certainly challenge any notions you might have about a free and
unregulated Web."

Google says it hopes the data will offer a "small window into what's
happening on the Web at large."


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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