There are several independent organizations that release regular reports about government requests for information and content removal, including Chilling Effects and the Open Net Initiative.
The state of government requests to Google and YouTube
Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services. We also receive requests for information about the users of our services and products from government agencies like local and federal police. The map shows the number of requests that we received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, with certain limitations.
We know these numbers are imperfect and may not provide a complete picture of these government requests. For example, a single request may ask for the removal of more than one URL or for the disclosure of information for multiple users. See the FAQ for more information.
In addition to requests received directly from government agencies, we’ve also included statistics on court orders for the removal of content, which often originate from private-party disputes. Other than that, the information says nothing about the volume of requests we get every day from private parties who want content removed from a Google product. We’re looking into ways to provide transparency into those numbers in the future.
Decisions about what content to remove or which user data requests to comply with can be complicated and difficult. We try to make as much information as possible available to our users and, at the same time, work hard to protect their privacy. For example, when we remove web pages from our search results in accordance with specific country laws, we remove them only from the search results for that country’s domain and not globally. When we receive a request for user information, we review it carefully and provide only information properly within the scope and authority of the request.
We believe that greater transparency will give citizens insight into these kinds of actions taken by their governments. We also hope this tool will be a valuable part of discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests and that other companies will make similar disclosures.
Observations on removal requests
The removal requests map shows two things: the number of government requests we received to remove content and the percentage of those requests that we complied with on a country-by-country basis. There are many reasons we may not have complied: Often, the requests are not specific enough for us to know what the government wanted us to remove (for example, no URL is listed in the demand). Many others that we did not comply with involved allegations of defamation in an informal letter from a government agency and not ordered by a court. We generally can’t determine if a statement is defamatory and rely on a court to make that judgment.
You may have noticed that there’s a question mark for content removal requests from China. As noted in the map, Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time. During the period that Google’s joint venture operated google.cn, its search results were subject to censorship pursuant to demands from government agencies responsible for Internet regulation. As we announced in March, users visiting google.cn are now being redirected to google.com.hk where we are offering uncensored search results.
For Brazil and India, government requests for content removal are high relative to other countries in part because of the popularity of our social networking website, orkut. The majority of the Brazilian and Indian requests for removal of content from orkut relate to alleged impersonation or defamation.
Germany’s numbers are also high relative to other countries. A substantial number of the German removals resulted from court orders that relate to defamation in search results. In addition, we receive lists of URLs from BPjM (BPjM-Modul), a federal government youth protection agency in Germany, for sites that contain content that violates German youth protection law, like content touting Nazi memorabilia, extreme violence or pornography, and we may remove those search results from google.de. Approximately 11% of the German removal requests related to pro-Nazi content or content advocating denial of the Holocaust, both of which are illegal under German law.
In our experience over the years a very small percentage of content removal requests from governments have centered on political speech, but often those requests are the ones that spark the most vigorous debate within Google. We have complied with some of those requests if, for instance, the material violated our own content policies. But for others, we didn’t. For example, in Argentina, a federal prosecutor claimed that information about him and his wife (a federal judge) had been posted for analysis on two political blogs and asked that we remove them. We removed a portion of one of the blogs for revealing private information about the judge, but otherwise did not comply. We also received a demand in late 2009 from a Canadian politician for the removal of a blog criticizing his policies. Again, we declined to remove the blog, because it did not violate our policies.
Observations on user data requests
The number of requests we receive for user account information as part of criminal investigations has increased year after year. The increase isn’t surprising, since each year we offer more products and services, and we have a larger number of users. For instance, look at Brazil: 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.
The statistics here reflect the number of law enforcement agency requests for information we receive at Google and YouTube. They don’t indicate whether we complied with a request in any way. We didn’t necessarily include requests that were addressed to the wrong Google company. We review each request to make sure that it complies with both the spirit and the letter of the law. We may refuse to produce information or try to narrow the request in some cases.
We would like to be able to share more information, including how many times we disclosed data in response to these requests, but it’s not an easy matter. The requests we receive for user data come from a variety of law enforcement agencies with different legal authorities and different forms of requests. They don’t follow a standard format or necessarily seek the same kinds of information. Requests may ask for data about a number of different users or just one user. A single request may ask for several types of data (for example, basic subscriber information or contents of emails) but be valid only for one type and not for another; in those cases, we disclose only the information we believe we are legally required to share. Given all this complexity, we haven’t figured out yet how to categorize and quantify these requests in a way that adds meaningful transparency, but we plan to in the future. We’ll continue to improve how we track requests and keep refining this tool.
At a time when increasing numbers of governments are trying to regulate the free flow of information on the Internet, we hope this tool will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests to censor information or obtain user data around the globe – and we welcome external debates about these issues that we grapple with internally on a daily basis.
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