The Take on Tech

Well the computer project blogs are taking a bit of time to put up, mainly because the computer has been in very busy use the past couple of weeks and I haven’t had that much time to just open the computer up and work on its innards.

Google recently published a list of the number of government entities’ requests for user-related data and for the removal of data from Google’s various services directed at Google from July 1, 2009 to December 1, 2009 (here). Google, stating,  “Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets,” did not disclose information on China.

As Google points out in its descriptions and FAQs accompanying the map showing the various statistics for each country, the number of requests may not be an accurate reflection of the amount of content that is requested by a government or the amount of content that a government asks to be removed.

The United States has the second-most number of government requests for information from Google, with 3580 requests. The country that has the dubious honor of first place is Brazil, with 3663 requests. Britain is in a distant third, with 1166 requests.

When it comes to the number of government requests to take down information, the U.S. is in fourth place with 123 requests (99 of which were approved by Google). The country with the most requests to remove information was Brazil with 291 requests (240 of which were approved by Google).

At first glance, not all that much information is being shared here. However, it reveals information about the nature of the countries themselves.

For the U.S. the majority of the requets for information takedown are directed at YouTube videos. This is unsurprising given the huge popularity of YouTube in the U.S. as well as the general potential of any video to depict in graphic detail any inflammatory event or idea. The majority of Brazil’s requests, on the other hand, were aimed at orkut, Google’s social networking site, which is likewise extremely popular in Brazil.

An interesting side note to this story is, as the Christian Science Monitor pointed out, this follows on the heels of a letter signed by government officials with privacy-related offices from ten countries (Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and the U.K.), which criticized Google for its own privacy practices, especially concerningGoogle Buzz.

The Google data also raises questions about our own expectations of access to information. It has become a fact of life that the biggest repositories of information in the modern age are corporations such as Google, Facebook, etc.

Google’s release of information does not include removal of information unrelated to government requests. Although the total amount of information removed by Google is understandably large (e.g. there are no doubt quite a few YouTube videos which violate various copyrights, are obscene, or otherwise violate the Terms of Use set forth by Google) I am curious as to those web search entries which have been taken down by Google. Hopefully Google will reveal any search entries which it has taken down since to remove a site from Google drastically reduces the chances of any online reader stumbling across the site and thus is an extremely powerful restriction against any site.

Transparency itself remains a rather hard goal. The information released by Google must be intentionally vague and nonspecific because to reveal specifics of the information that was requested to be taken down would reveal the information itself. Nonetheless, it would be helpful to see the general reason for the takedown, if not the topic of what was taken down.

Although the release of information is a welcome step towards greater citizen awareness of government practices, it is also a sobering reminder of the amount of power wielded by the technology companies of today. Google’s search engine, along with other search engines like it, serves as a gatekeeper to most of the internet. Citizens and other watchdog organizations must remain vigilant to ensure that Google will initiate similar actions in the future.