Indian Media Magazine – Media, Television, Movie and Celebrity News

Between June and Decem­ber 2011, Google received 2207 requests for dis­clo­sure of user data from the Indian gov­ern­ment, and it com­plied with as much as 66% of the requests, the com­pany has revealed as a part of its Global Trans­parency report.

User infor­ma­tion requests

Google received requests for infor­ma­tion for 3,427 users/accounts. The com­pany has clar­i­fied that this might include mul­ti­ple requests that ask for data for the same entity or a sin­gle request that spec­i­fies one or more enti­ties. The com­pany hasn’t revealed the nature of these requests or the exact nature of the data it shared, but the increase (over this six month time­frame) is a  jump over the 2439 requests between Jan­u­ary and June 2011 and 1699 requests between July and Decem­ber 2010.

66% com­pli­ance is alarm­ingly high, and remem­ber that a Google spokesper­son had informed Medi­aNama, that “As per the local crim­i­nal laws in India, Google does not inform users of their data being shared with the author­i­ties. As it can be seen as aid­ing in the destruc­tion of evi­dence.” In our opin­ion, eth­i­cally, Google should inform users whose data is shared with the gov­ern­ment agen­cies. On its web­site, Google says that the num­ber of requests for crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions increased year on year, but it clar­i­fies that it ” didn’t nec­es­sar­ily include requests that were addressed to the wrong Google com­pany. We review each request to make sure that it com­plies with both the spirit and the let­ter of the law, and we may refuse to pro­duce infor­ma­tion or try to nar­row the request in some cases.”

Block­ing & Removal of Content

Dur­ing the same period (July-December 2011), Google also received 101 requests for removal of 255 items of con­tent, and it only com­plied with 29% of these requests. The com­pli­ance rate has declined con­sid­er­ably over the six month period, as Google had com­plied with51% requests dur­ing the period January-July  2011, which is a good sign. The rea­sons of requests for removal:
– National Secu­rity: 10 items on YouTube requested for removal
– 25 for “Hate Speech”: 24 on YouTube & 1 on Orkut
– 7 for “Reli­gious offense”: 1 on Search & 6 on YouTube

There’s a com­plete list here.

It’s worth not­ing that the num­ber of requests under “Gov­ern­ment Crit­i­cism” as a rea­son have not been men­tioned this time. We’re not sure if this was due to Google not receiv­ing such requests or the com­pany decid­ing to club it under “Other” reasons.

Google had also started report­ing removal requests from copy­right own­ers and report­ing orga­ni­za­tions for removal of con­tent or search results that link to mate­r­ial that infringes copy­right. Google received 2 such requests from the Indian Gov­ern­ment: 1 on search & 1 on YouTube.

Clearly, the num­ber of requests for removal and for user data is increas­ing. How­ever, it’s a good sign that Google’s com­pli­ance rate on removal requests has declined com­pared to the pre­vi­ous period. Though, the com­pli­ance rate on user data dis­clo­sure has dipped mar­gin­ally, it’s still high.

Social net­works such as Orkut are also being mon­i­tored. Expect the same to be extended to Twit­ter and Face­book. India’s Inter­net Con­trol Rules will worsen the sit­u­a­tion, and the num­ber of requests are likely to go up. Remem­ber that what has been listed is only the gov­ern­ment requests: with the Inter­net Con­trol Rules, Google have to enter­tain requests from peo­ple for remov­ing of any­thing that is grossly harm­ful, harass­ing, impact­ing friendly rela­tions with other nations etc. Read the details here.

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