As you may or may not know, some countries don’t have the
same freedom of speech that others do and don’t like people posting negative
comments about leaders and politicians on things like websites and blogs. And
when it comes to sharing information, Google is one of the kings of the
practice.
Google has released some numbers on how many requests it
gets from other businesses and government agencies requesting that certain
content be removed from its sites and databases. In the second half of 2012
they have received 2,285 requests from government agencies to remove items such
as blog posts, videos and links to Google+ content which is up 25% from the
first half of 2012. And Brazil for example sends an average of 3 requests a day
to Google to have content removed from one place or another.
Some of the requests are on the strange side such as
British police asking for a picture of an officer in a racist uniform and India
asking for a map to be removed that showed a disputed border in Kashmir. One of
the most famous incidents is when several countries asked Google to remove the
Innocence of Muslims video that led to deadly protests in some countries.
Google removed it from some countries because it broke national laws or
resulted in violent riots.
On the other hand Google will remove content that is
proven to be illegal or is a threat to national security. Google started
releasing what it calls semi-annual transparency reports 3 years ago with the
intent is to "shine some light on the scale and scope of government
requests for censorship and data around the globe."
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