Google and Government Monitoring

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Governments across the globe are quietly asking tech companies to take down material they do not like, and to provide data about their users. Google took a welcome step toward transparency last week when it unveiled a new tool that reports on both of these kinds of requests. It is not perfect, but it should promote a more informed discussion about government monitoring of the Internet. We hope other companies follow suit.

Google’s new tool showed, at its launch, the number of requests for information from various countries between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2009. The data is broken down by country, and if you click on a specific country, you get details like what percentage of requests for data removal the company complied with.

Google has been candid about the fact that the data is not complete. On the global map, China has a big question mark over it. Beijing considers its requests for data to be a state secret, and Google is not providing any. Because a single request can be to take down one Web page or hundreds, the numbers give only a rough picture.

Not all requests to take down information are bad. The totals include requests to remove material that violates the law, including copyright and trademark law. What the data can do, says Nicole Wong, Google’s deputy general counsel, is to help start a more informed conversation about Internet censorship and monitoring. The company is trying to get an outside nonprofit to print the texts of the letters Google gets asking for this kind of information, which would provide more material about the specific nature of the requests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/opinion/02sun3.html?th&emc=th