Google just updated its transparency report, showing that government requests are on the rise. The new report looks at data about government requests from January to June.
“This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise,” says Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst at Google. “Government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report. In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts.”
“The number of government requests to remove content from our services was largely flat from 2009 to 2011,” she adds. “But it’s spiked in this reporting period. In the first half of 2012, there were 1,791 requests from government officials around the world to remove 17,746 pieces of content.”
You can peruse all the specifics here. Requests are going up around the world.
The report has new bar graphs in addition to the tables it had before. It has also been translated into 40 languages, and includes an expanded FAQ.