Google Rejects Many Political Govt. Removal Requests, With a Big Exception - Transparency Report

Google published its latest transparency report on Thursday, revealing a record number of content removal requests from governments and a precipitous rise in the rate of those requests over previous periods.

The transparency report - Google's eighth since it began releasing numbers of government requests to remove content every six months in 2010 - covers the first half of 2013, from January to June. In that time, according to Google, the internet search giant received 3,846 requests from various governments around the world to remove a total of 25,737 individual pieces of content.

The number represents a 68 percent increase over the previous period in late 2012, and an increasingly disturbing trend of governments asking Google to remove one specific kind of content: political speech. Google detailed the kinds of requests it has been receiving, more and more over each six-month period, from various governments:

"Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content. Judges have asked us to remove information that's critical of them, police departments want us to take down videos or blogs that shine a light on their conduct, and local institutions like town councils don't want people to be able to find information about their decision-making processes. These officials often cite defamation, privacy and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from our services."

Google says that for the period between January and June 2013, it received 93 requests to take down government criticism of some kind or another. The company says it only removed content in response to "less than one third of them," and four of those were due to copyright infringement.

For example, an Armenian politician asked Google to remove three YouTube videos for using profane language in reference to him - a request that the company denied. In Brazil, a court order asked Google to remove 107 blog posts and search results for linking to information that criticized a local government official for alleged corruption, which the company appealed while not removing the content.

The Exception To The Rule

But in other cases, Google complied with what could be seen as government requests for the removal of political content - despicable though that content may have been. The most notable example this year was when several countries in the Muslim world, along with others like the United States, Russia, and Australia, asked that YouTube videos containing content from the inflammatory "Innocence of Muslims" - which aggravated violent mobs in some countries - go under review for violations of Community Guidelines and/or be removed.

While Google found that the film and associated clips did not violate the guidelines, it did restrict the videos from view in Indonesia, India, Jordan, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Turkey, and temporarily took down the YouTube videos in Egypt and Libya, "due to difficult circumstances."

Google says its Transparency Report is not a comprehensive view of censorship online, but does demonstrate a "worrying upward trend in the number of government requests," especially from two countries: Turkey and Russia.

For more information on government requests for Google to remove content, check out Google's transparency report infographic page and the report's detailed notes section, which lists incidences by country.