Like other technology and communications companies, Google regularly receives requests from government agencies and federal courts around the world to remove content from our services and hand over user data. Our Government Requests tool discloses the number of requests we receive from each government in six-month periods with certain limitations.
Some content removals are requested due to allegations of defamation, while others are due to allegations that the content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or pornography. Laws surrounding these issues vary by geographic region, and the requests reflect the legal context of a given jurisdiction. We hope this tool will be helpful in discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests.
These observations on content removal requests highlight some trends that we've seen in the data during each reporting period, and are by no means exhaustive.
| Argentina- The number of content removal requests we received increased by 83% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| Australia- User data requests increased by ~72% compared to the previous reporting period because of a change in how Google categorized requests for data rather than an increase in the number of requests themselves.
|
| Brazil- During the Fall election period in Brazil, the number of court orders issued from electoral courts rose, ordering removal of content related to political campaigns. In addition, one court ordered removal of more than 11,500 photos from Picasa. The lawsuit alleged that the photos contained images of pages from copyrighted books.
|
| China- During the period that Google's joint venture operated google.cn, its search results were subject to censorship pursuant to requests from government agencies responsible for Internet regulation. Chinese officials consider censorship demands to be state secrets, so we cannot disclose any information about content removal requests for the two reporting periods from July 2009 to June 2010.
As we announced in June 2010, users visiting the landing page on google.cn, now see a link to google.com.hk, (our Hong Kong site), where users can conduct web search or continue to use google.cn services like music and text translate, which we can provide locally without filtering. Hence, beginning with the July - December 2010 reporting period, we disclose the number of content removal requests we receive from the Chinese government. (For that reporting period, we received no requests.)
|
| Croatia- For the first time, we received a significant number of content removal requests.
|
| Denmark- For the first time, we received a significant number of content removal requests.
|
| Hong Kong- The number of user data requests we received increased by 80% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| Hungary- For the first time, we received a significant number of user data requests.
|
| India- We received requests from different law enforcement agencies to remove a blog and YouTube videos that were critical of Chief Ministers and senior officials of different states. We did not comply with these requests.
- The number of content removal requests we received increased by 123% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| Israel- The number of user data requests we received increased by 80% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| Italy- We received a request from the Central Police in Italy for removal of a YouTube video that criticized Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and simulated his assassination with a gun at the end of the video. We removed the video for violating YouTube’sCommunity Guidelines.
- The number of user data requests we received increased by 29% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| Japan- The number of content removal requests we received increased by 271% compared to the previous reporting period.
- The number of user data requests we received increased by 29% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| Mexico- For the first time, we received a significant number of user data requests.
|
| Panama- For the first time, we received a significant number of content removal requests.
|
| Poland- The number of user data requests we received increased by 216% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| Portugal- The number of user data requests we received increased by 26% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| South Korea- The majority of the more than 32,000 individual items that Korean government agencies sought to be removed were search results on google.co.kr that contained RRNs.
- The number of content removal requests we received increased by 48% compared to the previous reporting period.
|
| Thailand- We received a request from the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology in Thailand to remove 43 pieces of content because they were mocking or criticizing the king in violation of Thai lèse-majesté laws. We restricted Thai users from accessing these videos.
|
| United Kingdom- The UK’s Office of Fair Trading requested the removal of fraudulent ads that linked to scams. We complied with the request and removed 93,360 items in total.
|
| United States- Six court orders resulted in the removal of 1,110 items from Google Groups relating to a case of continuous defamation against a man and his family.
|
| Vietnam- We received a request from the Vietnamese government to remove search results on a particular word that generated results that contained allegedly unflattering depictions of past Vietnamese leaders. We declined the request.
- For the first time, we received a significant number of content removal requests.
|