Google once again noticed a rise in government requests to remove content that’s critical of government issues, even though the company is fighting government opposition to transparency and forcing for limits to crucial government data gathering.
Susan Infantino, legal director at Google, said in a blog post that government requests to remove political content have been a consistent concern for the company.
During the first six months of 2013, “we received 3,846 government requests to remove 24,737 pieces of content — a 68 percent increase over the second half of 2012,” Infantino described.
In past the Internet search engine received 1,455 demands for data between June and December 2011, mostly in relation to criminal inquiries.
Google’s Richard Salgado writes:”We want to go even further. We believe it’s your right to know what kinds of requests and how many each government is making of us and other companies. However, the U.S. Department of Justice contends that U.S. law does not allow us to share information about some national security requests that we might receive. Specifically, the U.S. government argues that we cannot share information about the requests we receive (if any) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But you deserve to know. ”
Governmental content removal requests grew in Turkey, Russia and Infantino also.
