Google can't seem to keep itself out of the hot zone. Today, Google has decides to become "transparent" regarding government requests for information about people who use Google services and requests from governments for Google to take down information that's posted to its services.
You can see the map of requests here:
http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/
From this we learn that the U.S. is second to Brazil in requests for information about people who use Google services. During the period between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, Brazil made 3663 requests and our United States made 3580 requests for information about people using Google services. "Why Brazil?" you may ask. That's an interesting story having to do with Google's social networking service called Orkut which never made a single dent in the U.S. market but, for reasons having to do with the serendipity of social networking caught fire in Brazil and now Orkut is, for the most part, a Brazilian / Portuguese-speaking social networking site. (Odd how these things work out, eh?)
So, the United States made 3580 requests for data and 123 removal requests. According to Google, it complied with 80.5% of the removal requests fully or partially. Of those requests that Google complied with sixty-three regarded YouTube videos and seven additional YouTube videos were removed by court order.
Of course, we're describing requests for information that have traveled over the internet and anyone who knows anything about the internet probably knows that the NSA can grab anything that crosses a piece of fiber or copper or the air so these official request numbers are very interesting but might as well be a red herring.
Then, there was the news from the Wall Street Journal yesterday that privacy officials from ten countries demanding that Google build in more privacy. You can read the .pdf of the letter here: Letter to Eric Schmidt from Ten Countries
What interests me the most is that these diplomats are getting down to business, very specific business, by the second paragraph and on to the third:
However, we are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of the world's citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications. We were disturbed by your recent rollout of new technological applications. We were disturbed by your recent rollout of the Google Buzz social networking application, which betrayed a disappoint9ing disregard for fundamental privacy norms and laws. Moreover, this was not the first time you have failed to take adequate account of privacy considerations when launching new services.
Wow. Just wow.
Now you'll have to excuse me so I can find a solid VPN provider and get back up-to-speed on PGP.
