Michael Perkins

Google should be applauded for launching a Government Requests Tool for reporting the number of requests for private user information and the number of requests for removal of content that the company receives from governments around the world every six months. For instance, during the six months ending in December 2009, Google received the following requests for private user data:

Country	Requests
Brazil	3663
United States	3580
United Kingdom	1166
India	1061
France	846
Italy	550
Germany	458
Spain	324
Australia	155
Argentina	98
Poland	86
Belgium	67
Netherlands	67
Singapore	62
Portugal	45
Japan	44
South Korea	44
Switzerland	42
Canada	41
Israel	30

In a blog entry announcing the tool, David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer wrote:

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Written in 1948, the principle applies aptly to today's Internet -- one of the most important means of free expression in the world. Yet government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content.

So it's no surprise that Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services. Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography. We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship.