So it’s no surprise that Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services. Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography (1). We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship (2).
(1)
Do your statistics cover all categories of content removals?
No. Our policies and systems are set up to identify and remove child pornography whenever we become aware of it, regardless of whether that request comes from the government. As a result, it’s difficult to accurately track which of those removals were requested by governments, and we haven’t included those statistics here.
(So, why did you mention this as “these requests”?)
(2)
* Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time.
(where’s the real transparency?)
Furthermore, I tell you the incorrectness regarding requests/removals data from Brazil in your tool is a big truth.
tiagovaz.org 