Governments of western economies has been breathing down the neck of Google to censor ‘political’ content on Google’s cyberspace.
From TGDaily.com
Google's released data on the governments aiming to censor internet content, and says it's seen a worrying rise in the number of such requests from Western democracies.
In the second half of last year, for example, Spanish regulators asked for the removal of 270 search results that linked to blogs and newspaper articles referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors.
One example that's more entertaining than chilling came from the Canadian authorities. They called for the removal of a YouTube video showing a man urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. Google let the video stand.
"When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added annotations with some of the more interesting stories behind the numbers. We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it’s not," says senior policy analyst Dorothy Chou…
Google also received a number of requests from US law enforcement agencies. One concerned a blog post alleged to defame a law enforcement official in a personal capacity; another a series of 1,400 YouTube videos that were claimed to constitute harassment.
Google has so far ‘refused to comply’ with these requests and thus deserves a pat on the back.
Google earlier announced that they will warn users of state sponsored privacy intrusions.
My guess is that governments will continue to pressure Google, but perhaps more through indirect channels (taxes, licenses, anti-trust etc..) to get their wishes done.
Will Google eventually cave in?
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