The methodology is simple enough. The EFF looks at 18 prominent tech companies including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Apple, and Amazon, and judges them based on 6 different categories (up from 4 last year). It then awards stars to the companies if their actions in those categories are on the side of protecting user rights.

This year, Twitter and ISP Sonic.net were the only two companies to receive full 6-star ratings from the EFF. Last year, they were the top two performers in the report, scoring a 3.5 and 4 star rating, respectively.

Here are the 6 categories that the EFF looks at for their report:

1. Does the company require a warrant for content of communications?
2. Does the company tell users about government data requests?
3. Does the company publish transparency reports?
4. Does the company publish law enforcement guidelines?
5. Does the company fight for users’ privacy rights in court?
6. Does the company fight for users’ privacy in Congress?

Verizon and Myspace received zero stars, while Apple, AT&T, and Yahoo received 1 star. On the flip side, Dropbox, Google, LinkedIn, and Spideroak got nearly perfect marks, coming in with 5 stars out of 6.

Readers of this year’s annual privacy and transparency report should be heartened, as we are, by the improvements major online service providers made over the last year. While there remains room for improvement in areas such as the policies of location service providers and cellphone providers like AT&T and Verizon, certain practices – like publishing law enforcement guidelines and regular transparency reports – are becoming standard industry practice for Internet companies.

And we are seeing a growing, powerful movement that comprises civil liberties groups as well as major online service providers to clarify outdated privacy laws so that there is no question government agents need a court-ordered warrant before accessing sensitive location data, email content, and documents stored in the cloud.

Remember: you entrust most of these companies with almost everything in your digital life – photos, personal info, location, financial info. It’s important to know exactly where each stands in terms of protecting that info against prying eyes. The EFF warns that the absence of a star doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is thwarting user rights in that category – it simply may mean that they haven’t been given the chance to defend user rights in that arena. Here’s the EFF’s full star report:

“From July to December 2012, we received 2,285 government requests to remove 24,179 pieces of content—an increase from the 1,811 requests to remove 18,070 pieces of content that we received during the first half of 2012,” says Google Legal Director Susan Infantino.

In the United States specifically, Google saw the highest level of content removal requests ever with 262 court orders and 59 from the government/police. Most of these requests had to do with defamation, mirroring global trends.

User data requests in the U.S. were also on the rise in the time of July to December of last year, with a total of 8,438 individual requests covering 14,791 users. This is up nearly 500 from the last reporting period. Google says that they complied with 88% of these requests, which is actually lower than it has been in the past.

Here’s Google’s breakdown of the last reporting period:

• We received inquiries from 20 countries regarding YouTube videos that contain clips of the movie, “Innocence of Muslims”: Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Brunei, Djibouti, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Maldives, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Australia, Egypt, and the United States requested that we review the videos to determine if they violated our Community Guidelines, which they did not. The other 17 countries requested that we remove the videos. We restricted videos from view in Indonesia, India, Jordan, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Turkey. Due to difficult circumstances, we temporarily restricted videos from view in Egypt and Libya.
• We received a request from a local government agency to remove a YouTube video that allegedly defamed a school administrator. We did not remove the video.
• We received three separate requests from local law enforcement agencies to remove three YouTube videos that allegedly defamed police officers, public prosecutors or contained information about police investigations. We did not remove the videos.
• In response to three court orders, we removed 771 items from Google Groups relating to a case of continuous defamation against a man and his family.
• We received three different court orders from different individuals that were addressed to third parties, along with a request to remove 690 items from Google Groups, that allegedly contained defamatory statements. We asked for clarification but never received a reply.
• We received three court orders from different individuals that were addressed to third parties, along with requests to remove 452 search results that linked to websites that allegedly contain defamatory content. We removed 70 search results that we determined to fall within the scope of the orders.
• In response to a court order, we removed 119 search results that linked to websites allegedly hosting trademark infringing material.

In March, Google began including National Security Letter requests in the Transparency Report. Today, Google says that they will start breaking down YouTube removal requests to specify whether Google removed the video due to violation of YouTube guidelines or violation of local laws.

You can view the full Transparency Report here.

Starting today, Google is now including data about National Security Letters on its U.S. Transparency Report.

National Security Letters (NSL) are a form of a demand letter that are used by the U.S. Government (mostly the FBI) to extract information from an organization in the name of national security. The kind of info requested in NSLs includes stuff like transactions, phone numbers, and email addresses.

In the period following 9/11, the FBI’s use of National Security Letters dramatically increased with the implementation of the Patriot Act.

The thing about NSLs is that they also come complete with a gag order (most of the time), so the companies who received the letter can’t discuss it with the users whose information has been requested. For the Transparency Report, Google has worked with the FBI to loosen this secrecy – ever so slightly.

The first thing that you’ll notice when looking at the new NSL stats is that they are unspecific – to a ridiculous degree. For instance, Google is only reporting the number of NSLs received in batches of 1,000. That means that every year on record (2009-present) has logged between 0 and 999 NSLs.

“You’ll notice that we’re reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers. This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations. We plan to update these figures annually,” says Google.

I guess something is better than nothing. Still, it’s a good step forward for the Google Transparency Report.

Google has just released the new data.

Since Google began the Transparency Report in 2009, government requests for user data have increased, without fail, for every single reporting period. Today, we officially learn that the period ending December 31st, 2012 is no different.

Google reports 21,389 individual user data requests worldwide from July through December of last year. That’s up from 20,938 during the period of January through June of last year. As it stands, the last period’s requests are up 70% from when Google first began their Transparency Report.

Worldwide, Google is producing at least some data per request in 66% of these cases. That’s down from 67% six months ago and down from 76% in December of 2010.

When we look at the United States specifically, we see a similar trend. User data requests have increased for the sixth straight time, hitting 8,438 in the period ending December 31st, 2012. In the period ending June 2012, 7,969 requests were logged. Those 8,438 specific data requests covered 14,791 different user accounts.

When Google made their first Transparency Report, 3,580 user data requests were reported.

One number that is falling is the percentage of requests in which Google complies either fully or partially – but barely. Google report compliance in 88% of government data requests in the U.S., down from 90% during the last reporting session.

With this Transparency Report, Google has implemented a mew metric. Now, you can break down the data requests based on the type of legal process that the government initiated – ECPA subpoenas, ECPA search warrants, and other.

This time, 68% of user data requests came in the form of ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) subpoenas. Google says that these are easier to get because they don’t involve judges, and therefore are the most common. 22% of requests came in the form of ECPA search warrants, which are usually court-ordered. 10% fall into that “other” category,which Google describes as “mostly court orders issued under ECPA by judges or other processes that are difficult to categorize.”

You may notice that this latest Transparency Report doesn’t include new data on content removals, although all previous reports have. “One last thing: You may have noticed that the latest Transparency Report doesn’t include new data on content removals. That’s because we’ve decided to release those numbers separately going forward. Stay tuned for that data,” says Google.

First up, the Help Center. Facebook has given it a major redesign that “is designed to get you the information you need in just a few clicks,” according to the company. The landing page now features six colorful boxes that display major topics – learn the privacy basics, see what’s new on Facebook, report an issue, learn more about Timeline, review our safety resources, and discover games & apps.

Facebook says that these main topics can change, as they can tailor them to each individual user based on how they are using Facebook and what they need to see.

The Help Center landing page also includes top questions at the bottom, as well as new navigation options on the left-hand side.

Facebook has also made one of their transparency features available to all users. The Support Dashboard, previously launched back in April, will now be an option for 100% of users around the world.

The Support Dashboard is Facebook’s way of letting users track the progress of all the various reports they make – whether it be reporting a photo that you think violates Facebook’s terms, or a user profile that’s been harassing you. The dashboard will let users know if their reports have been received by Facebook or not, and whether or not Facebook has taken action and removed the photo, profile, etc.

The Support Dashboard is accessible in users’ Account Settings.

“The reports you make enable our team to quickly and effectively remove abusive content from Facebook. We’re proud to be able to offer a tool that gives you more insight into your reports and hopefully inspires you to report actionable content to Facebook,” they say.

Just take a look at the recent Street View wi-fi spying scandal that’s (presumptively) wrapped up. Google only incrementally shared as little as it had to and even then didn’t make it easy for investigators to get answers from the company. The company said it hadn’t been collecting “payload” data with via Street View cars, but then it said it was but it was an accident; Google actually said it stopped sponging up data from unsecured wi-fi networks. The company was eventually fined for obstructing the investigation but said the whole mess had been caused by a rogue engineer. When more pushing came to more shoving, it turns out the wi-fi spying wasn’t an accident and wasn’t even the act of some nefarious rogue – some higher-ups at Google had known about it all along.

Google holds its cards so deathly close to its chest that had privacy organizations or the government not been persistent in asking the company questions, we never would have known that Google did in fact know of the Street View spying or that it wasn’t just some bad egg at work.

Andrew Blum, the author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, recounts an encounter with Google where the company exhibited the same unnatural distrust for inquiries about the company’s practices. Traveling around to explore the physical infrastructure that supports the internet, Blum was welcomed for his curiosity about what the internet looks like behind the curtain – until he got to Google. Limited to touring the parking lot of the Google’s offices in The Dalles, Oregon, and consistently redirected anytime he asked a question about what goes on at Google, Blum writes that Google’s alleged willingness to embrace a new stage of transparency was a qualified sham.

Walking past a large data center building, painted yellow like a penitentiary, I asked what went on inside. Did this building contain the computers that crawl through the Web for the search index? Did it process search queries? Did it store email? “You mean what The Dalles does?” my guide responded. “That’s not something that we probably discuss. But I’m sure that data is available internally.” (I bet.) It was a scripted non-answer, however awkwardly expressed. And it might have been excusable, if the contrast weren’t so stark with the dozens of other pieces of the Internet that I visited. Google was the outlier—not only for being the most secretive but the most disingenuous about that secrecy.

After my tour of Google’s parking lot, I joined a hand-picked group of Googlers for lunch in their cafeteria overlooking the Columbia River. The conversation consisted of a PR handler prompting each of them to say a few words about how much they liked living in The Dalles and working at Google. (It was some consolation that they were treated like children, too.) I considered expressing my frustration at the kabuki going on, but I decided it wasn’t their choice. It was bigger than them. Eventually, emboldened by my peanut-butter cups, I said only that I was disappointed not to have the opportunity to go inside a data center and learn more. My PR handler’s response was immediate: “Senators and governors have been disappointed too!”

I recently watched the John Carpenter classic They Live and it doesn’t really tax my imagination too much to picture Blum in the “Rowdy” Roddy Piper role of that movie: the knows-too-much outsider who sees past the cultured propaganda that the alien overlords have indoctrinated all of its subordinates into believing. Only Blum didn’t need special sunglasses to see that Google was hiding something. Or everything.

That’s just the thing, though: what exactly is Google so desperate to keep concealed? Why, more importantly, does Google guard against any questions whatsoever with the tenacity of a kodiak hyped up on a couple of meth rocks while trying to protect its den? The company, despite its friendly masquerade of colors and cute animations, lives and dies by this Hobbesian tenet that it is constantly besieged and no outsider can be trusted.

You have to imagine that Marius Milner, the so-called “rogue” engineer who developed the software that the Street View cars used to collect information across wi-fi networks, has some contractual gag order that keeps him from telling his side of the story or even spilling some beans about what goes on behind Google’s walls. The company practically threw him under the bus after that whole debacle and yet nary a peep has been heard from him since the scandal.

By all rights and purposes, Google’s transparency report (that it willfully provides) begins to look like an act of subterfuge when it’s compared to the company’s overall policy on transparency. Instead of serving the purpose to maintain good relations with the public – which it probably would help to do in a different scenario – the report is more like a ceremonial offering to public so that we’ll all leave Google alone. “What, I already gave you the transparency report,” crotchety old Google scraped from its gravely throat, “What else do you want from me? Scram!”

It’s Google’s prerogative to be as guarded as it wants, that’s fine. But such practices don’t exactly inspire the most sincere trust in its users. Worse, Google continues to tell people to trust it and that it knows best in spite of consistent public dissent and disagreement. Google doesn’t want you to ask questions about its policies but, instead, to blindly put your faith in Google to do what’s best because Google wants you to accept that it knows what’s best for you. Do not hesitate in accepting Google. Rather, follow along with the rules Google makes up as it goes along and don’t ask any questions.

Or, more simply: obey.

Although this information is already available to anyone who wants to physically go to a television station and access the files, the FCC has said the move is part of its bigger effort to transition from paper to digital across the board. It also believes that more transparency is necessary in political advertising.

Would you like to see more transparency in political ads? If so, what are the benefits? Please share.

Political ad campaigns have become particularly controversial of late as financial issues continue to plague the country.

“With the tremendous amount of political advertising that’s being spent already in the Presidential campaign and many other local campaigns, there’s a concern about who’s paying for it all and whether or not there are some interests that are spending an excessive amount of money,” Mark Fratrik, the Vice President and Chief Economist at BIA/Kelsey, told WebProNews.

In spite of these financial concerns, television stations are against the regulation due to concerns of their own. As Fratrik explained to us, they are not opposed to the digital database specifically, but they are instead worried about the additional burden on them.

“[TV stations] are a little concerned about the logistics of it, [and] the amount of additional man-hours that each station would have to incur to respond to these proposed regulations,” he said.

TV broadcasters are also speaking out against the proposal since radio stations were not included. But, according to Fratrik, the vast majority of revenue from political advertising campaigns goes to TV stations. In fact, campaign spending on local TV stations is expected to reach near $3 billion this year. Although radio stations bring in some revenue through political campaigns, Fratrik said it pales in comparison to the amount that TV stations produce. Therefore, the FCC didn’t feel it was necessary to include radio stations in the proposal.

Another concern that TV broadcasters have is the impact the regulation would have on pricing. They fear that once the prices are made readily available, the competitive marketplace will decrease. This fear is magnified since political campaigns have the privilege of receiving the lowest costs possible for spots.

“They’re concerned about the lowest prices being out there and that other advertisers will start demanding them,” said Fratrik.

Various broadcasters have voiced their opposition on this aspect, especially since practices may vary from station to station. In a complaint filed from Allbritton Communications, which owns ABC-affiliated stations in 6 markets, Jerald Fritz, the Senior Vice President, said that the online database would “ultimately lead to a Soviet-style standardization of the way advertising should be sold as determined by the government.”

Furthermore, many of those in opposition have questioned the FCC’s authority in this matter, since campaign finance does not fall into the realm of its governance. However, some have suggested that the Commission is being forced to step in by way of the media since the Federal Election Commission has fallen short.

Commissioner Robert McDowell, who is the sole Republican at the FCC, sides with the TV stations in this debate and has called the proposal a “jobs destroyer.” Last week, at a House Appropriations Subcommittee meeting over the matter, he pointed out the harmful impact the regulation could have.

“While the original goal of such disclosure may have been to create more transparency in the political spending process, the unintended consequence could be to encourage price signaling and other anti-competitive conduct by broadcasters that could produce harmful market distortions,” McDowell said.

Since neither side appears to be backing down from its stance, Fratrik told us it was not likely that the mandate would be approved this year. What’s more, if the administration changes after the election in November, he believes it could impact everything.

Which side of this debate do you take: the FCC or TV stations? Let us know.

During the period of January 2011 to July 2011, Google reports that they received a request from a local United States law enforcement agency. The agency wanted Google to take down certain YouTube videos that depicted police brutality. Google says that they refused to remove the videos in question.

On a separate occasion, another law enforcement agency made multiple requests that Google remove videos “allegedly defaming law enforcement officials.” They also refused to remove the content, which they file under “defamation requests.”

Overall in the U.S., the number of requests to remove content from Google services increased by 70% when compared to the last period (July to December 2010).

Across the world, content removal requests increased in places like India, Poland, and the UK. The United Kingdom saw an increase in these requests comparable to what was seen in the United States (71%).

According to the raw data, U.S. governmental agencies filed the 3rd most requests for content removal with 92. This is behind Brazil (224) and Germany (125). Those 92 requests contained 757 actual items to be removed. Google complied with 63% of those requests.

On another front, user data requests increased by 29% from the last reporting period (in the U.S.). The United States had the most data requests and among those requests, the most users/accounts specified of any country on the report.

From January 2011 to June 2011, Google received 5,950 user data requests the encompassed 11,057 different users. Since Google just began disclosing the compliance rate of these requests, we now know that Google is handing over the data with relative certainty when it comes to us in the United States. During that period, Google complied with 93% of those 5,950 user data requests.

That was the highest compliance rate of any country listed in the report. On the flip side, Google received 42 user data requests from Russia and complied with exactly 0% of them.

Of course, the fact that Google refused to yank videos of police brutality and ones with so-called “defamatory content” is a big deal. Videos of police brutality have been talked about a lot lately, as many have emerged from the #OccupyWallStreet movements and become viral hits on YouTube.

Does anything surprise you about this transparency report? Let us know in the comments.

Back in the summer, Google updated the report with a new design and added details.

Today, Google announced that it is now providing even more data, specifically in the Government Requests tool. Google is now showing numbers for requests it received for the first half of 2011, and for the first time, is showing the number of users or accounts that are specified in government requests.

“We also recently released the raw data behind the requests,” says Google Senior Policy Analyst Dorothy Chou. “Interested developers and researchers can now take this data and revisualize it in different ways, or mash it up with information from other organizations to test and draw up new hypotheses about government behaviors online.”

“We believe that providing this level of detail highlights the need to modernize laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which regulates government access to user information and was written 25 years ago—long before the average person had ever heard of email,” adds Chou. “Yet at the end of the day, the information that we’re disclosing offers only a limited snapshot. We hope others join us in the effort to provide more transparency, so we’ll be better able to see the bigger picture of how regulatory environments affect the entire web.”

You can check out the Transparency Report here. What else would you like to see added to the report?

The latest round of data covers the second half of 2010, but they’ve also updated the design and added details. “We’ve highlighted some significant changes in the data and provided context about why those changes may have occurred during this reporting period,” says Google’s Matt Braithwaite. “We’ve also made it easier for you to spot trends in the data yourself. For example, we’ve changed the format so you can now see data on a country-by-country basis. We’re also clearly disclosing the reasons why we’ve been asked to remove content—such as an allegation of defamation or hate speech.”

“For the first time, we’re also revealing the percentage of user data requests we’ve complied with in whole or in part,” adds Braithwaite. “This gives you a better idea of how we’ve dealt with the requests we receive from government agencies—like local and federal police—for data about users of our services and products.”

It is quite interesting to look at which countries have increased their respective numbers of takedown requests. From July to December 2010, Argentina increased its requests by 83% compared to the prior reporting period. Requests by Hong Kong jumped 80%. Australia increased by about 72%, but Google says this was due to a change in how the company categorizes requests for data (though did not specify).

Regarding takedown requests from Brazil, Google says, “During the Fall election period in Brazil, the number of court orders issued from electoral courts rose, ordering removal of content related to political campaigns. In addition, one court ordered removal of more than 11,500 photos from Picasa. The lawsuit alleged that the photos contained images of pages from copyrighted books.”

Google also says it saw a significant number of content removal requests from both Croatia and Denmark for the first time.

Here in the United States, six court orders resulted in the removal of 1,110 items from Google Groups, related to a defamation case.

All of these and other countries can be viewed here.