“When we launched the Transparency Report,” wrote Google’s legal director Susan Infantino on the company’s public policy blog yesterday, “we said we hoped it would shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe.” ‘Censorship’ is the removal of content from Google’s various services. ‘Data’ is account information on Google users. Details released yesterday show that government demands for removal or at least review of content have risen dramatically in the six months to December 2012.
Such demands had earlier peaked in the first half of 2010 (1198 demands), lessened slightly in the latter part of 2010 (952 demands), and were still only at 1054 by December 2011. During 2012, however, government demands started to rise. In the first half of last year there were 1811 government removal demands, and in the latest six months this rose further to 2285 (more than double the same period of the preceding year).
It has, says Infantino, “become increasingly clear that the scope of government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown.” She highlights three areas that stand out. In Brazil, because of municipal elections, Google received an average of 3.5 court orders every day during the run up to the election. Many of the requests related to alleged defamation of candidates in contravention of the Brazilian electoral code; and many are being contested by Google, despite the court orders, “on the basis that the content is protected by freedom of expression under the Brazilian Constitution.”
Her second example is Russia, where six requests were received in the first half of 2012, and 114 in the second half. Most of the requests cite a new law designed to allow the government to blacklist offensive sites. “If the websites themselves cannot be shut down, internet service providers (ISPs) and web hosting companies can be forced to block access to the offending material,” reported the BBC on 1 November, 2012.
The third example is the Innocence of Muslims video available on YouTube, which led to inquiries from 20 different countries. “While the videos were within our Community Guidelines,” wrote Infantino, “we restricted videos from view in several countries in accordance with local law after receiving formal legal complaints.”
It’s not all bleak news, however, suggests Jeff Landale, a policy analyst with digital rights organization, Access. “Although the raw number of requests have risen,” he noted yesterday, “overall compliance has decreased, giving the appearance that Google is pushing back against superfluous, arbitrary, and unwarranted requests.” As Google’s content removal request system matures, he added, “the company appears to be growing more confident in its ability to demand the application of due process prior to censoring user content.”