Google And The Corridors Of Power

21 Apr 2010 by Graham Lyons - News David Drummond, EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, google No Comments

Google, like other internet and communications companies are in a privileged position, they see large amounts of data moving around international communications networks. Because they hold this position they can regularly receive requests from governments to actually remove some content from user access. In addition they can receive requests to hand over user data eg. it may be needed for a criminal investigation.

David Drummond - Google Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

This system has traditionally been something kept behind closed doors but Google Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond posted recently to the Google Public policy blog, this looks set to change.

Google has launched an interesting site which details the requests they received from government agencies (including court orders requesting content removal). It certainly makes for interesting reading, I certainly wouldn’t have guessed the ‘top ten’ data requesters.

There are some caveats with this information, one big one being that there is no data for China. The overview page explains that Chinese official regard censorship demands as a state secret and as such they have not included that information. Its well worth reading the overview page on the Government Requests site, there is some nice analysis and explanation of the data.

The creation of this new site and the information now being released seems to have been warmly received by the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. They point out that more detail about the information would be beneficial – percentages breaking down the reasons for site removals, whether user data was released to identity anonymous speakers or to gain further information about a known individual, etc.

..More information can be found on the Google Government Requests site and on the Electronic Frontier Foundation blog.