Google content removal requests at highest level yet

Google cites Brazil, Russia and "Innocence of Muslims" video as reasons behind spike

The Internet has made the world more open, allowing for a freer expression of ideas, both good and bad. For every site that does some good by exposing something that people really should know, there is another site dedicated to some wild-eyed conspiracy on the same subject. But that's the price we pay for free expression. Governments around the world, though, don't seem to see it the same way, and their efforts to remove content from Google services are at the highest levels yet. 

Government requests to remove data from Google sharply increased in the second half of 2012, to the highest levels yet, it was revealed in a blogpost Thursday.

Between the months of July and December 2012, Google received 2,285 government requests to remove 24,179 pieces of content.  That amounts to a 20% increase in the number of requests, from 1,811 in the first half of the year, and a 25% increase in the pieces of content, from 18,070 in the first half.

Google has been releasing transparency reports since 2010, and these are, by far, the highest number of removal requests the site has seen yet.

"As we’ve gathered and released more data over time, it’s become increasingly clear that the scope of government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown. In more places than ever, we’ve been asked by governments to remove political content that people post on our services. In this particular time period, we received court orders in several countries to remove blog posts criticizing government officials or their associates," Susan Infantino, Legal Director at Google, wrote.

So how goes Google account for this spike in requests? Three factors: Brazil, Russia and the infamous “Innocence of Muslims" movie that got everyone so worked up a few months ago.

Google points to "a sharp increase in requests from Brazil," where requests to remove content jumped 365%, from 191 to 697, due to municipal elections that were held in the fall. Half of the requests for data removal "called for the removal of 756 pieces of content related to alleged violations of the Brazilian Electoral Code, which forbids defamation and commentary that offends candidates."

Google says that it is appealing a lot of these cases, since they violate the Brazilian Constitution.

There was also a huge spike in Russia, as a result of a new law that allows the government to blacklist and force certain websites to shut down without a trial, in order to protect children. Google received only six requests for removal in the first half of 2012, the most ever for the country. That number jumped to 114 in the second half of the year, with 107 of them regarding the new law. 

Another contributing factor was the “Innocence of Muslims" video on YouTube, which sparked major controversy last year. Google received requests from 20 countries to block the video, which is complied with "in several countries in accordance with local law after receiving formal legal complaints." The video was also restricted in Egypy and Libya.

In the United States, there were 312 requests for content removal, up over 12% from 273 in the first half of the year.

Government data requests

While previous Transparency Reports included new data on both content removals and data requests, Google recently decided to release those numbers separately going forward.

In January, Google revealed the number of government requests for user data in the second half of 2012

Between July through December 2012, Google received 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 users around the world. That was up 2% from the 20,983 requests in the first half of 2012. 

But the increase year-to-year was even greater. There were 42,327 requests in 2012, up 25% from 34,001 in 2011.

(Image source: https://arstechnica.com)