The Maltese government has not submitted any requests to Google to disclose information about users or remove content from the company’s services in the first six months of this year.
This is revealed in its latest edition of Google’s bi-annual Transparency Report, which started in 2009.
The Transparency Report consists of two separate sets of data. One is the requests made by governments around the world for information about users. The other is requests from government agencies and courts around the world to remove content from Google services and hand over user data.
Since 2009 there were no user data requests from Malta but there were some requests for the removal of data. Between July and December 2009 there were less than 10 removal requests and all requests were complied with. Between January and June 2010 there were less than 10 such requests, but only 33 per cent were fully or partially complied with. Between July and December 2010 there were less than 10 submissions and none were accepted.
“Transparency is a core value at Google,” it said on its Transparency Report webpage. “As a company we feel it is our responsibility to ensure that we maximise transparency around the flow of information related to our tools and services. We believe that more information means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.”
While between January and June 2011 there were no requests from the Maltese government for information on users, the USA topped the list with 5,950 requests, of which 93 per cent were fully or partially complied with. India, France, the UK and Germany complete the top five list.
While in the first six months of this year there were no requests from Malta for the removal of content from Google’s services, Brazil tops the list, as a result of the fact that Orkut, Google’s social network, is very popular in the country. Germany, USA, South Korea, and Taiwan are the top five rankings.
According to Google, governments ask companies to remove content for many different reasons. For example, some content removals are requested due to allegations of defamation, while others are due to allegations that the content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or pornography. Laws surrounding these issues vary by country, and the requests reflect the legal context of a given jurisdiction.
“We believe that this raw data will give people insight into whether or not our services are accessible in a given geographic region at a given time. Historically, information like this has not been broadly available. We hope this tool will be helpful in studies about service outages and disruptions and that other companies will make similar disclosures,” Google says on its webpage.
www.google.com/transparencyreport/