Google Enumerates Government Requests

D H NG writes "In the aftermath of Google's exit from mainland China, it had sought to be more open about what it censors. Google has launched a new tool to track the number of government requests targeted at Google and YouTube. These include both requests for data and requests to take down data. A quick look at the tool shows that Brazil is the top country in both categories (largely because Orkut is popular there), and information for China cannot be disclosed because 'Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets.' As part of its four-part plan, Google hopes to change the behavior of repressive governments, establish guiding principles for dealing with issues of free expression, build support online to protest repression, and better provide resources and support for developing technology designed to combat and circumvent Internet censorship."

Comments

Any second now.

[moogied]

Queue the people explaining how this is evil because its "not enough".

Re:Any second now.

[ElectricTurtle]

Google is trying to keep its employees and former employees out of prison. You do realize that these requests made by the Chinese government were processed in part by Chinese employees of Google, yes? Well if Google airs all the requests in violation of Chinese law, guess who ends up in pound-you-in-the-ass prison? It's not Larry and Sergey. I'm glad that Google has conscience enough not to throw its current and former Chinese employees under the bus just to make political hay or accomplish a goal, however admirable that goal may be.

Re:Any second now.

[ElectricTurtle]

Your cherry-picked examples have vanquished me! Clearly this demonstrates that no peon(s) would be singled out to be made an example of for others who might be so bold as reveal state secrets. After all, China has no history of doing things like that.

(That's all sarcasm, dawg.)

Re:Any second now.

[Zardus]

It's in part that exact attitude that allowed somewhere between 3 and 60 million (citation: Wikipedia article for "Joseph Stalin") people to die under the Soviet regime. How exactly do you expect an unarmed, suppressed peoples to take over an armed, trained, and extremely well-funded government? Sure, it happens sometimes, but rarely does it happen without external support or out-of-the-ordinary circumstances (say, like the bad government being based halfway around the world in the case of the US revolution, not to mention the French support).

From personal experience, the people in those oppressive regimes oftentimes root for the enemy. At least, I know this was the case in the Soviet Union and is the case in Iran.

So it's quite easy to say "It's not our culture, why do we have the right to fault them for silencing and killing their citizens," but in the end that's just a really lame way to avoid the reality: you're sitting by and doing nothing while people are being oppressed and killed. It doesn't necessarily make you evil, as there's nothing that necessarily obligates you to care, but it does make you less good than the people that are at least trying to do something about it. And in this case, in some tiny little way, Google is at least trying to do something.

All you have to do is redefine the request

[voidptr]

So if Google's already shown if a state considers that information a state secret they'll recind publishing it, who wants to bet there will be a bill in Congress by tomorrow classifying it in the states too?

Why?

[MrTripps]

So why can't Google tell China to go pound sand and post them anyway? They can always blame it on some anonymous hacker, say the data was found in a bar, or just slip it to Wiki Leaks.

Re:Why?

[Nadaka]

Possibly because they still have people in china that will be arrested, found guilty and executed if google went that far.

Re:Good middle ground.

[countertrolling]

If you are in a minority that believes Child Porn is OK and Hate speech is OK...

I don't believe those things are OK, but I do know that censorship is much worse. Find another way to deal with the problem..

Great, it's aborted before it begins

[TheSpoom]

Without China, other governments will get the same idea, and the tool becomes completely useless. C'mon Google, grow some balls.

Brazilian Censorship

[acid06]

As a Brazilian, I'm glad this exposes a situation which isn't usually discussed but should be given more attention now that Brazil is trying to gain additional worldwide relevance (through G20 and all that).

Brazilian courts have been extremely unreasonable and have forced Google to hand over private information and take down pages without much fanfare. Even though none of the data is actually hosted in Brazil, the courts have fined and threatened to fine Google several times because of this.

In Brazil, service providers have liability for their users actions and there are laws protecting the "private image" of individuals (even celebrities). In effect, paparazzi can be sued around here. Journalists can be sued and bloggers aren't considered journalists. Writing a story denouncing a politician can get you a lawsuit.

All this mess accounts for a lot of these requests. Google isn't being evil, but I wish there was more international pressure against the Brazilian government.