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Thursday, March 27, 2014

Google handing over less data as the government requests more

Posted by Jim Bernstein

With all the talk in the news about the government spying on us and collecting personal information from our computers and cell phones people often wonder how much data is given to the government by companies like Google and Facebook etc. Since these companies store so much of our information it makes sense that the government would go after them to get the information they say they need to “keep us safe”.

After the whole Edward Snowden incident people have been looking at companies like Google and Facebook and wondering how much of our information they are sharing with the government. At first Google made it seem like they would never do such a thing but it turns out that they were giving out some information to the government.

But now it seems that they have decided to cut back on how much data they share even though the government has increased the number of requests for information from Google. Government requests have gone up 120% since 2009. During the second half of 2013 Google was fulfilling 64% of government requests compared to 76% of requests in the second half of 2010. The US government has the highest number of requests for data by far with France coming in 2nd and Germany coming in at 3rd.

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