

Google reveals statistics on government requests of its data - michaelfairley
http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/

======
tseabrooks
Clicking on China is interesting. I had no idea the Chinese government
considered these things to be 'state secrets'. The data Google posted here
isn't even information on what _exactly_ was removed / requested. It's only
broad stroke information - How many requests - how often there was compliance
- what time of content was requested removed.

I wonder if this information for China were released if there would be much
outrage... I can imagine:

-Outrage with Google for how often they complied

-Outrage at China for the sheer number of requests

-Outrage at China for the types of content removed

All in all, releasing that information would probably hurt Google far more
than it would hurt China.

~~~
kevindication
Don't forget possible retribution upon any Google employees left in China as
well.

~~~
ycseattle
Get real. Do you really believe the government will go after Google's Chinese
employee?

~~~
tsally
Uh, yes?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China)

More specifically:

"On 17 Oct 2009, Reuters reported that Guo Quan a professor in Nanjing
Teachers University was sentenced to 10 years in jail for "inciting
Subversion" of Government. There are more than 40 people in jail for
criticizing the government."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#Political_freedom)

Threatening to provide or actually providing uncensored search results to the
public could certainly be construed as inciting subversion.

~~~
ycseattle
So you think the government will go after the google employee because they are
going public to support Google? Have you heard any Google Chinese employee
"reportedly" supporting the employer and bashing Chinese government, even
those living in US?

Do you know the full story of the 40 people in jail for criticizing the
government? Do you know the population in China? Do you know how many people
are jailed in US because of Patriot Act, with no reason and no trial?

~~~
ycseattle
For some reason I cannot reply your comment, maybe because my karma is too low
now.

"Normal citizens, with full rights under the law, are being openly convicted
and suffering harsh penalties for speaking out against the government."

I would argue, in most cases, they are not normal citizens, even though in
western media, they are portrait as freedom fighter. I can even tell you how
to find information to prove this point: check out the China Study program in
John Hopkins University (the top one in US), and they will tell you the
conclusion in political science field is the freedom fighters from the
Tiananman Square in 1989 are extremists. I don't think the reporters will go
out and interview those political scientists. There are other good China Study
program you can get academic opinions from, including Univ. of Iowa (another
top 1), UW is good as well.

I am not arguing with you that there is no human right issue in China. There
are, but the problem is presented out of the context and in many cases with
false information. I am only suggesting that people do more firsthand
investigation and talk to Chinese for some full stories, but looks like I am
getting enough down-votes now.

~~~
TeHCrAzY
FYI, there is some throttling re. frequency of replies, the reply link wont
show up (seems to give people time to think before replying :) )

------
aristus
Ha, Brasil is first. A friend of mine was the admin contact for the .br domain
for a large internet company. When he went back to Brazil on a visit, he was
summoned to the police station for questioning (!!) over some stolen credit
cards that had been used on the site.

The law is pretty strict there about ownership and responsibility for what
goes on on your servers.

~~~
michaelfairley
Brazil is probably a special case due to the heavy use of Orkut there. Indeed,
218 of its 291 removal requests are related to Orkut.

------
kierank
Large map: <http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/transparency.html>

~~~
Mark_B
Data source: <http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/data.json>

------
Frazzydee
Love the detailed stats for removal requests, but I'm more interested in data
requests.

How often are they complied with, and what data did they want? On what
grounds?

~~~
dpritchett
Related: Yahoo issued a takedown request when their guidelines and price sheet
for "data requests" leaked in 2009:

<http://cryptome.org/0001/yahoo-cryptome.htm>

------
tybris
Maybe Google is gradually becoming the rebel it always claimed to be. Easier
being a rebel if you're part of the system.

------
wdewind
This is a bit unrelated, but does anyone know how google manages to make those
three pages load without showing the refresh flash? It doesn't look like they
are being loaded via AJAX so I can't figure it out...

~~~
naz
The pages share a stylesheet that has a expiry date in the future.

~~~
wdewind
Ahh thanks! Was wondering this for a long time. So does that mean the google
logo needs the same?

------
BoppreH
I think Brazil is in first because Google's products and services are widely
used here.

I have yet to see anyone using a search engine that is not Google, and we have
the majority of Orkut users (facebook, myspace? what's that?).

You don't hear about other video sites other than Youtube.

And there are only three types of emails in use: emails with more than 10
years from random domains, emails from Gmail and emails from Hotmail (and only
because of the MSN messenger).

It's no surprise that our law enforcement has a really active connection with
Google, especially because there's little fuss when important legislation
regarding internet access passes, so it's a "nobody cares". But it's still
scary to see the numbers.

~~~
bensummers
Some interesting comments on Brazil here:
<http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/overview.html>

eg: "We have a relatively high number of requests for information compared to
other countries in part because we have such a large number of Brazilian users
on orkut, our social networking site."

------
th
The breakdown by the type of removal requests is somewhat more telling than
the raw numbers.

Brasil: 75% orkut

Germany: 52% web search, 38% YouTube

India: 84% orkut

US: 57% YouTube, 20% web search

~~~
jsharpe
That's not really telling considering that usage of orkut in Brazil and India
is orders of magnitude higher than in the US or Germany.

~~~
alexgartrell
I think the insinuation is that the takedown requests, though numerous, are
usually for little stuff like high school bullying and DMCA enforcement rather
than for political reasons or other much sketchier things.

~~~
nandemo
Yes, it's probably not political stuff. Bullying, slander, fake accounts are
rampant in Orkut.

Also, it used to have many security holes (maybe still has, I don't use it
anymore) and Brazil has no shortage of script kiddies. So there many cases of
hijacked accounts and communities.

~~~
nandemo
s/there many/there have been many

------
rlpb
It would be interesting to see this data adjusted for "total usage", although
it might be hard to quantify this.

For example, how about the number of requests per 100,000 Google "users" per
service?

------
natch
I'm a fan of Google, but notice how they on the one hand posture as champions
of freedom of information, but on the other hand do things like omit any
commenting feature from pages like this, so the hard questions cannot be asked
directly on the site. It's a kind of preemptive censorship-by-site-design,
imho. Irony ftw.

------
yellowbkpk
Honestly, I would be more interested in hearing about Google's requests of
government data.

For example, the fact that they have tax parcel information showing up on the
map in my neighborhood means that they also have the amount of taxes I paid,
my name, and property value. I know this is all public information, but an
"ordinary citizen" would have to walk to the courthouse and pay $1/page for a
printed copy of the city records and then scan it back in. Did they really do
this throughout the country?

~~~
travisp
>I know this is all public information, but an "ordinary citizen" would have
to walk to the courthouse and pay $1/page for a printed copy of the city
records and then scan it back in.

This definitely isn't the case everywhere. My county (not a particularly tech
savvy one) has it all available online on their own website, including full
assessment information on the house, your name, amount you paid in taxes,
etc.. You just type in the address you want. Or, you can search by name
instead of address!

~~~
yellowbkpk
Yes, but to get that information in bulk as Google would, you (usually) have
to print it all out.

------
noisedom
I'm interested to know what book search the U.S. requested to remove.

------
jamesshamenski
Iran is not on the list. Possibly they requested to be removed.

~~~
steve19
Iran simply blocks services it does not like.

There would be no point in Iran requesting info and removals from Google.
Google would ignore them at best, or worse, publish the requests and make
Iranian govt look like idiots.

------
mufumbo
It's really cool. I would like more details on "data request".. it's still
very dark matter that doesn't really tell much about. It would be interesting
to know how much "per person data requests" has been released. Brazil has more
"data requests" than US, but it may happen that US requests that ALL user data
is sent back every month, witch would count as 12 requests :)

------
blickly
I wonder what it means when some countries, like South Korea, have Street View
removal requests even though they don't have Steet View itself.

------
pistoriusp
It's interesting to see that the continent of Africa has never made any
requests.

