Google transparency report: Govt content removal requests on the rise

Pakistan makes one request to remove one piece of content classified under "adult content".

Google released its Transparency Report for the first half of 2013, revealing that amid a 68% rise in requests by government to remove content, Pakistan was among the countries with the least requests, while Turkey led with the most requests.

The report, which aims to provide raw evidence of how laws and policies affect access to information online, showed that from January to June 2013, Google received 3,846 government requests to remove 24,737 pieces of content—a 68 per cent increase over the second half of 2012.

Pakistan government made one request for removing one item during this period. Google said that the item, classified under "adult content," was removed. There were no court requests from Pakistan during this period.

Google also noted that during this period, YouTube video service remained disrupted in Pakistan.

Turkey registered the largest increase in removal requests, with local Turkish authorities making 1,673 requests to remove 1,2162 items. These consist two-thirds of the total requests received by Google in this period. Of these, 184 requests for 9,610 items were made by Turkish courts while 1,489 requests for 2,552 items was by local authorities.

Of these requests, Google said it had complied with 42 per cent of requests by the courts and just 13 per cent of the requests made by Turkish government.

US was second behind Turkey in the countries with the most requests. There were 545 requests to remove 3,887 items. Google said 438 requests for 3,415 pieces of content were made by US courts, to which there was 55 per cent compliance. The US government made 107 requests to remove 472 pieces of content and 57 per cent of the requests were complied with.

Russia, which introduced a blacklist law last fall, saw the second sharpest rise in requests to remove content. Google said it received 257 removal requests for 277 pieces of content. Of these there were four requests by Russian courts for removal of four pieces of content of which only one request was complied with. Of the 253 request by the Russian government to remove 273 pieces of content, 67 per cent of the content was removed.

On the other hand, India made 16 requests based on court orders and 147 requests based on police and executive orders. The former met with a 38 per cent compliance from Google, while the latter met with 18 per cent compliance.

The requests from India included content such as impersonation, defamation, adult content, bullying and harassment, hate speech and national security.

Google noted that the most consistent trend for content removal over the past four years remains governments asking removal of political content, judges asking to remove information that is critical of them and police departments asking to take down videos or blogs that express their content.

These officials often allude to defamation, privacy and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from the search engine’s services. During this period, they have collectively received 93 requests to take down government criticism and removed content in response to less than one third of them. Four of the requests were submitted as copyright claims.