Google has released a new Transparency Report, its twice-yearly presentation of data about demands it receives to remove content from its services–everything from videos on YouTube to posts on Blogger to listings and links generated by Google searches. As a measure of the status of global free speech rights, it is a depressing but eye-opening trove of information.
In the last six months of 2012, governments around the world (the U.S. included) sent Google 2,285 demands to take down content, up 26 percent from the preceding six months, and more than double the number of take-down requests in the last half of 2011. These include both requests in the form of court orders–typically court orders secured by public officials alleging they have been defamed by content on a Google-owned service–and requests received directly from executive officials, police departments, security forces and the like.
Despite the alarming increase in governmental take-down demands overall, it appears to be due mainly to a surge in demands in the form of court orders–which, though hardly benign, are less worrisome generally, from a civil liberties standpoint, than demands made by executive/police/security officials. The latter actually declined slightly from the preceding six months.
The transparency data are also revealing about Google’s willingness to resist governmental demands to censor content. As recently as 2010, Google wasn’t pushing back very hard at all. In the last six months of that year, Google responded to governmental demands by removing part or all of the disputed content in fully 98 percent of cases involving court orders, and in 76 percent of all cases. By the end of 2012, however, Google’s policy had changed. The company reports that its rate of “compliance” with governmental take-down demands fell to 43 percent overall in the July-December 2012 period (48 percent for court orders).
That Google acquiesces at all to government demands to remove content may come as a surprise to many. After all, Google withdrew its search business from China, the world’s biggest internet market, to avoid having to adhere to China’s censorship code. But Google clearly does remove content in response to government demands–almost as often as it doesn’t, according to data in the Transparency Report.
In part, this reflects the bitter reality that Google must comply with the laws of countries where it has employees and assets. They would be at risk if Google simply ignored government demands. (And while it did leave China, Google can’t afford to leave all foreign markets.) No doubt many government requests also concern content which, upon review, is found to violate Google’s own voluntary guidelines, and the content is removed for that reason. (The guidelines, for example, bar “hate speech” even though hate speech has 1st Amendment protection from government censorship in the U.S.).
As for the rest, Google provides some anecdotal information. A few examples (in Google’s words):
- Argentina. . . We received a request to remove a YouTube video that allegedly defames the President by depicting her in a compromising position. We age-restricted the video in accordance with YouTube’s Community Guidelines.
- Greece . . . In response to a court order, we removed a blog post from the blogspot.gr domain that allegedly defamed a retired millitary officer accused of business gain through political ties, including ties to a former Prime Minister of Greece.
- Italy . . . In response to a court order, we removed a blog post from the blogspot.it domain that allegedly defamed an individual by speculating that he was making a profit from charging the government fees for housing officials and was able to do so because of his association with certain politicians.
- Russia . . .We received 107 requests from the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications to remove 107 items from several different products for allegedly violating the Federal Law on Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection, for containing content related to suicide and drugs. We restricted content from local view in response to about one-third of the requests and removed content globally for violating our product policies in response to more than half of the requests.
- Spain . . .In response to a court order issued by a judge in a provinicial court branch, we removed a blog post from the blogspot.es domain that allegedly defamed another judge in the same provincial court branch.
- U.S. . . . In response to three court orders, we removed 771 items from Google Groups relating to a case of continuous defamation against a man and his family.
Google’s Transparency Reports not only make the company more accountable to its customers, but it puts governments on notice that their censorship demands to Google will be revealed to the world–and not least to their own citizens. Will shaming work to protect free expression on the internet? It’s worth a try.
–PETER SCHEER