June 17, 2012 at 8:23 PM
About two years ago, we launched our interactive Transparency Report. We started by disclosing data about government requests. Since then, we?ve been steadily adding new features, like graphs showing traffic patterns and disruptions to Google services from different countries. And just a couple weeks ago, we launched a new section showing the requests we get from copyright holders to remove search results.
The traffic and copyright sections of the Transparency Report are refreshed in near-real-time, but government request data is updated in six-month increments because it?s a people-driven, manual process. Today we?re releasing data showing government requests to remove blog posts or videos or hand over user information made from July to December 2011.
Unfortunately, what we?ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added annotations with some of the more interesting stories behind the numbers. We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it?s not.
This is the fifth data set that we?ve released. And just like every other time before, we?ve been asked to take down political speech. It?s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect?Western democracies not typically associated with censorship....
