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Britain heads Google’s European censorship list
http://technology.timesonline.co ... /article7103435.ece
Nigel Kendal, Technology Editor
The British Government made more requests for content to be removed from Google last year than any other country in Europe, according to figures released by the company today.
Between July and December last year, Google received 1,166 data requests from British government agencies, of which 59 were requests for content to be removed. Google complied with 76.3 per cent of the removal requests.
France made 846 data requests, but fewer than ten removal requests, of which 66.7 per cent were successful.
Globally, Britain ranks third in terms of data requests, behind Brazil (3,663) and the United States (3,580), although figures for China, where Google faced heavy censorship until withdrawing earlier this year, are unavailable.
David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said that Google had decided to make the figures available in the interests of transparency.
“Government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content,” he said.
“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. 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.
“Data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship.”
At present, Google provides only the number of requests received for data and data removal; no detail is available about the nature of individual requests, although Google says that it plans to fine-tune the data in future reports, which it will issue every six months.
The picture provided by the data may be fuzzy, but Google’s aims are clear. Apart from sites that breach local laws – such as the glorification of Nazism in Germany – Google is committed to blocking censorship where it contravenes Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which upholds the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Writing in The Washington Post, Mr Drummond said: “We are looking into how we can better provide resources and support for developing technology designed to combat and circumvent Internet censorship.
“The inherently global, borderless nature of the Internet means that policies created to govern content in a few countries can affect all of us.
“We believe that more information generally means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.” |
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發表於 2010-4-21 02:41
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