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Google reveals statistics on government requests of its data
- tseabrooks 17y agoClicking on China is interesting. I had no idea the Chinese government considered these things to be 'state secrets'. The data Google posted here isn't even information on what exactly was removed / requested. It's only broad stroke information - How many requests - how often there was compliance - what time of content was requested removed. I wonder if this information for China were released if there would be much outrage... I can imagine: -Outrage with Google for how often they complied -Outrage at China for the sheer number of requests -Outrage at China for the types of content removed All in all, releasing that information would probably hurt Google far more than it would hurt China.
- kevindication 17y agoDon't forget possible retribution upon any Google employees left in China as well.
- ycseattle 17y agoGet real. Do you really believe the government will go after Google's Chinese employee?
- buster 17y agoI think chinas supression of their own people has a dimension people in the western world can rarely believe. I'm not sure myself, but i consider those things possible in china.
- ajkirwin 17y agoYes. I do.
- ycseattle 17y agoLet me guess, you've never been to China and you don't know anybody who grow up in China.
- dschobel 17y agoWhat's your point? We live in a world where communication obviates the need for everyone to be first hand witnesses. The entire concept of news reporting is predicated on credible third parties.
- ycseattle 17y agoMy point is that majority of western news about China are biased and sensational and taken out of context. You form your opinion based on the source that is already filtered by the journalists. You will have much better view of the whole story if you can read Chinese media, just for the full story. You might refuse to do so because they are controlled by the government. I ask you to talk to Chinese, you refuse as well because you think there is no need. How "sound" do you think your opinion will be?
- krschultz 17y agoI have friends born & raised in China who say the exact opposite of what you are are saying.
- papersmith 17y agoI was reading a popular Chinese forum (tianya.cn) thread on contaminated food, and I was surprised at how anti-government the tone was. (think reddit, but more extreme) There were jokes taking direct jabs at the party and state, and I was amazed that they didn't get taken down. I think Chinese tend to avoid talking shit about their country in front of foreigners to "save face". It seems to be part of the culture.
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- tsally 17y agoUh, yes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_... More specifically: "On 17 Oct 2009, Reuters reported that Guo Quan a professor in Nanjing Teachers University was sentenced to 10 years in jail for "inciting Subversion" of Government. There are more than 40 people in jail for criticizing the government." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#Political_freedom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_... Threatening to provide or actually providing uncensored search results to the public could certainly be construed as inciting subversion.
- ycseattle 17y agoSo you think the government will go after the google employee because they are going public to support Google? Have you heard any Google Chinese employee "reportedly" supporting the employer and bashing Chinese government, even those living in US? Do you know the full story of the 40 people in jail for criticizing the government? Do you know the population in China? Do you know how many people are jailed in US because of Patriot Act, with no reason and no trial?
- stingraycharles 17y agoThose points do not refute the argument that the Chinese government might go after the employees, and Google is being careful with that. Google's position in China is sensitive given the things that happened there in the past months, and I can imagine they don't want to fuel the fire any more than necessary.
- jrockway 17y agoDo you know how many people are jailed in US because of Patriot Act, with no reason and no trial? People like to bring this up, and I have a few things to say about it. 1) Just because the US does something, doesn't mean it's OK. We nuked fucking Japan. Doesn't make nuclear war OK. 2) The people held by the US are not citizens, they are soldiers picked up in war zones and held outside the US. Completely unacceptable? Yes. Violation of international law? Hopefully. But this is not what's going on in China. Normal citizens, with full rights under the law, are being openly convicted and suffering harsh penalties for speaking out against the government. If the US government did what the Chinese government did, in this narrow category, the government officials would be the ones in prison. The US is far from perfect, but it is pretty good.
- kevindication 17y agoThey've been afraid of this before. From http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china... : <blockquote>Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.</blockquote>
- ycseattle 17y agoThis statement is exactly why I think Google is evil in this case. This is what Google PR talk, you will never know how their employee feels. In reality, if you read Chinese and the other side of story, you probably will feel the employees are more a victim of Google instead of China. I think Google deliberately add this statement to make them sounds like "caring." I won't even try to convince you with my opinion, just encourage you to talk to Chinese living in western countries to get a full story. Google has good information about "emotion" and it is a media company. A popular media theory is "if you control their emotion, you control their opinion."
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- garply 17y agoActually, word here (in Beijing) has been that the gov't has been scooping up old Google engineers to work on the state-sponsored CCTV search engine.
- aristus 17y agoHa, Brasil is first. A friend of mine was the admin contact for the .br domain for a large internet company. When he went back to Brazil on a visit, he was summoned to the police station for questioning (!!) over some stolen credit cards that had been used on the site. The law is pretty strict there about ownership and responsibility for what goes on on your servers.
- michaelfairley 17y agoBrazil is probably a special case due to the heavy use of Orkut there. Indeed, 218 of its 291 removal requests are related to Orkut.
- wdewind 17y agoThis is a bit unrelated, but does anyone know how google manages to make those three pages load without showing the refresh flash? It doesn't look like they are being loaded via AJAX so I can't figure it out...
- naz 17y agoThe pages share a stylesheet that has a expiry date in the future.
- wdewind 17y agoAhh thanks! Was wondering this for a long time. So does that mean the google logo needs the same?
- ComputerGuru 17y agoActually, on Chrome/OSX there is a "refresh flash" :(
- tybris 17y agoMaybe Google is gradually becoming the rebel it always claimed to be. Easier being a rebel if you're part of the system.
- Frazzydee 17y agoLove the detailed stats for removal requests, but I'm more interested in data requests. How often are they complied with, and what data did they want? On what grounds?
- dpritchett 17y agoRelated: Yahoo issued a takedown request when their guidelines and price sheet for "data requests" leaked in 2009: http://cryptome.org/0001/yahoo-cryptome.htm http://cryptome.org/0001/yahoo-cryptome.htm
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- kierank 17y agoLarge map: http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/transparency.html http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/transparency.html
- Mark_B 17y agoData source: http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/data.json http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/data.json
- jamesshamenski 17y agoIran is not on the list. Possibly they requested to be removed.
- steve19 17y agoIran simply blocks services it does not like. There would be no point in Iran requesting info and removals from Google. Google would ignore them at best, or worse, publish the requests and make Iranian govt look like idiots.
- BoppreH 17y agoI think Brazil is in first because Google's products and services are widely used here. I have yet to see anyone using a search engine that is not Google, and we have the majority of Orkut users (facebook, myspace? what's that?). You don't hear about other video sites other than Youtube. And there are only three types of emails in use: emails with more than 10 years from random domains, emails from Gmail and emails from Hotmail (and only because of the MSN messenger). It's no surprise that our law enforcement has a really active connection with Google, especially because there's little fuss when important legislation regarding internet access passes, so it's a "nobody cares". But it's still scary to see the numbers.
- bensummers 17y agoSome interesting comments on Brazil here: http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/overview.html http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/overview.html eg: "We have a relatively high number of requests for information compared to other countries in part because we have such a large number of Brazilian users on orkut, our social networking site."
- dpurp 17y agoI think it would be more interesting if the number of requests were normalized based on either number of google users or the population of that country.
- rlpb 17y agoIt would be interesting to see this data adjusted for "total usage", although it might be hard to quantify this. For example, how about the number of requests per 100,000 Google "users" per service?
- yellowbkpk 17y agoHonestly, I would be more interested in hearing about Google's requests of government data. For example, the fact that they have tax parcel information showing up on the map in my neighborhood means that they also have the amount of taxes I paid, my name, and property value. I know this is all public information, but an "ordinary citizen" would have to walk to the courthouse and pay $1/page for a printed copy of the city records and then scan it back in. Did they really do this throughout the country?
- travisp 17y ago>I know this is all public information, but an "ordinary citizen" would have to walk to the courthouse and pay $1/page for a printed copy of the city records and then scan it back in. This definitely isn't the case everywhere. My county (not a particularly tech savvy one) has it all available online on their own website, including full assessment information on the house, your name, amount you paid in taxes, etc.. You just type in the address you want. Or, you can search by name instead of address!
- yellowbkpk 17y agoYes, but to get that information in bulk as Google would, you (usually) have to print it all out.
- noisedom 17y agoI'm interested to know what book search the U.S. requested to remove.
- mufumbo 17y agoIt's really cool. I would like more details on "data request".. it's still very dark matter that doesn't really tell much about. It would be interesting to know how much "per person data requests" has been released. Brazil has more "data requests" than US, but it may happen that US requests that ALL user data is sent back every month, witch would count as 12 requests :)
- th 17y agoThe breakdown by the type of removal requests is somewhat more telling than the raw numbers. Brasil: 75% orkut Germany: 52% web search, 38% YouTube India: 84% orkut US: 57% YouTube, 20% web search
- jsharpe 17y agoThat's not really telling considering that usage of orkut in Brazil and India is orders of magnitude higher than in the US or Germany.
- alexgartrell 17y agoI think the insinuation is that the takedown requests, though numerous, are usually for little stuff like high school bullying and DMCA enforcement rather than for political reasons or other much sketchier things.
- nandemo 17y agoYes, it's probably not political stuff. Bullying, slander, fake accounts are rampant in Orkut. Also, it used to have many security holes (maybe still has, I don't use it anymore) and Brazil has no shortage of script kiddies. So there many cases of hijacked accounts and communities.
- nandemo 17y agos/there many/there have been many
- blickly 17y agoI wonder what it means when some countries, like South Korea, have Street View removal requests even though they don't have Steet View itself.
- natch 17y agoI'm a fan of Google, but notice how they on the one hand posture as champions of freedom of information, but on the other hand do things like omit any commenting feature from pages like this, so the hard questions cannot be asked directly on the site. It's a kind of preemptive censorship-by-site-design, imho. Irony ftw.
- pistoriusp 17y agoIt's interesting to see that the continent of Africa has never made any requests.