Google Enumerates Government Requests 216
D H NG writes "In the aftermath of Google's exit from mainland China, it had sought to be more open about what it censors. Google has launched a new tool to track the number of government requests targeted at Google and YouTube. These include both requests for data and requests to take down data. A quick look at the tool shows that Brazil is the top country in both categories (largely because Orkut is popular there), and information for China cannot be disclosed because 'Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets.' As part of its four-part plan, Google hopes to change the behavior of repressive governments, establish guiding principles for dealing with issues of free expression, build support online to protest repression, and better provide resources and support for developing technology designed to combat and circumvent Internet censorship."
Any second now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Any second now. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Any second now. (Score:5, Funny)
Given the error, queueing the grammar nazis might not be such a bad idea.
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The pretty map would be better replaced by PDFs of the actual gov't requests.
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That would just give some people an online directory to all child porn that has been removed from Google searches.
Treated separately (Score:2)
Well, according to their FAQ, they treat child porn separately and do remove it anyway, independently of gov. requests.
And thus they don't include it in these statistic.
So if they publish requests' PDFs, the child porn will be missing anyway.
Re:Any second now. (Score:4, Funny)
Three Cheers!
HIP HIP...
Re:Any second now. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google China's top sale (Zhongjie Song) has joined Chinese yellow page website www.aibang.com [aibang.com] as president.
The top R/D person (Jin Wang) joined google's direct competitor Baidu as vice president.
I think I know what other google's employees in China are busy with recently? And I don't see why they will end up in jail.
Re:Any second now. (Score:4, Insightful)
(That's all sarcasm, dawg.)
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Sometimes, staying neutral is pushing an agenda. It could be the agenda of making the almighty dollar at the expense of everything else. In this case, that agenda would be pushing the agenda of the Chinese government to oppress their own people. Google is merely saying that they cannot push their own agenda (of making money) if it also pushes an agenda they cannot agree to (censorship).
There is no neutral here. Either you support China's agenda by doing what they tell you, or you do not support China's
Re:Any second now. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's in part that exact attitude that allowed somewhere between 3 and 60 million (citation: Wikipedia article for "Joseph Stalin") people to die under the Soviet regime. How exactly do you expect an unarmed, suppressed peoples to take over an armed, trained, and extremely well-funded government? Sure, it happens sometimes, but rarely does it happen without external support or out-of-the-ordinary circumstances (say, like the bad government being based halfway around the world in the case of the US revolution, not to mention the French support).
From personal experience, the people in those oppressive regimes oftentimes root for the enemy. At least, I know this was the case in the Soviet Union and is the case in Iran.
So it's quite easy to say "It's not our culture, why do we have the right to fault them for silencing and killing their citizens," but in the end that's just a really lame way to avoid the reality: you're sitting by and doing nothing while people are being oppressed and killed. It doesn't necessarily make you evil, as there's nothing that necessarily obligates you to care, but it does make you less good than the people that are at least trying to do something about it. And in this case, in some tiny little way, Google is at least trying to do something.
All you have to do is redefine the request (Score:4, Insightful)
So if Google's already shown if a state considers that information a state secret they'll recind publishing it, who wants to bet there will be a bill in Congress by tomorrow classifying it in the states too?
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How many bills in Congress were passed because the Russians were doing it during the Cold War?
I don't think that'll happen, IMO.
Indeed ! (Score:2)
Indeed, we can just imagine the public uproar.
All tabloids are just waiting for something like this to happen so they can plaster "USA following China's opressive steps !!!" everywhere.
(And several Godwin points to be awarded in the following discussion ;-) )
Re:All you have to do is redefine the request (Score:4, Interesting)
That wouldn't have much effect: due to the First Amendment, it's not actually illegal for third parties to republish classified information. It is a crime to leak it in the first place (so e.g. if you're a CIA officer and start mailing out documents, you can go to jail), but not to publish if you somehow get a hold of it [wikipedia.org]. So making it classified information wouldn't prevent Google from publishing their own statistics.
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But it is illegal to violate a court's gag order. So watch as a new, automatic, clause is inserted in every single warrant to access Google's systems going forward. Something to the effect of establishing a gag order on the recipient of the warrant.
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I think Doe v. Ashcroft already nipped that one in the bud.
Go Canada! (Score:5, Funny)
Now I have something else to distinguish myself from our brothers to the south besides a ridiculous accent and a distinct smell of maple syrup!
Re:Go Canada! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Go Canada! (Score:4, Interesting)
on a more serious note, Canada's population is 10% of the US. Coincidentally, the number of requests is about 10% of the US's.
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i should say for the removal requests, the data requests, is way more for the US, which is kind of scary
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A repressive government will want more results removed, but so will a government with more google users.
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Thats what makes Canada such a great place. I can drive for 3 hours in any given direction and not hit another city with a population over 2000.
Makes for great vacationing.
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Funny. When I go on a vacation I look for culture, history, local entertainment, new experiences. 3 hours of nothingness sounds like the exact opposite of what I'd want.
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Funny. When I go on a vacation I look for culture, history, local entertainment, new experiences. 3 hours of nothingness sounds like the exact opposite of what I'd want.
Oh, you have to drive 4 hours for that
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I wouldn't consider the Culture, history, and local entertainment of your hometown a real vacation though.
What I mean is, when I want to get away from the city - I don't have to leave the state.
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Re:Go Canada! (Score:5, Funny)
> I can drive for 3 hours in any given direction and not hit another city with a population over 2000
I used to have a car like that...
Don't be silly! (Score:2)
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Canada humbly requests your permission to suck ass.
Get it right.
actually, Canada is pretty cool. :-P They're fun to tease. Like that Vancouver episode of simpsons.
Hiya! My name is Milhoose. I just about popped from laughing.
Well, pull out of China completely (Score:2, Insightful)
And tell them where they can put their "state secrets". Maybe if they disclose all their "requests", they'll stop making them.. But no... appeasement is the word of the day.
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Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Possibly because they still have people in china that will be arrested, found guilty and executed if google went that far.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Screw China. (Score:2)
China’s censorship demands stop being “state secrets” and become public knowledge as soon as they give them to a private international US-based company, Google, and that company decides to publish them.
Hey China: Secrets are things you don’t tell people. If you want to secretly censor stuff, we can’t stop you, but you can’t tell us to help you censor stuff and at the same time keep it a secret.
Request vs Demand (Score:4, Interesting)
What they DON'T show -- and I've sent feedback asking for -- is how many of these are legal demands, such as warrants or court orders, versus informal requests.
For anyone else interested in requesting the same info, here is the link: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/request.py?contact_type=privacy&ctx=contactpolicy [google.com]
Re:Request vs Demand (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of the "we complied with this 'request'" bits - for data removal, they don't show stats on information requests at this time - do show "(court order)", though.
Which of course has me curious.. which Google Video item was removed by court order from the U.S. government?
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I suppose that could be the case...
The site is supposed to list Government requests - which would imply that it was a 'vs The Govt' type thing.
But if you count -any- court order, even those resulting from cases brought before the court by non-government entities, as being a government-issued order (as the courts are part of the government).. then sure. That would certainly skew the statistics.
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What they DON'T show -- and I've sent feedback asking for -- is how many of these are legal demands, such as warrants or court orders, versus informal requests.
It looks to me like all the ones that are court orders have "court order" in parenthesis after the listing. So for Canada (as an example) there were 16 removal requests, two of which were court ordered.
Transparent, benign big brother? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think Orwell saw that one coming...
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Really? Is it possible for a profit motivated organisation to be benign?
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Really? Is it possible for a profit motivated organisation to be benign?
It's as possible as it is for any human organization to be benign. (You can take that as a yes or a no, depending...)
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I'd suspect that it's a smaller subset of possibility than the answer to your question:
And even if it's possible for people to be benign, how about a group of people organised for a non-benign purpose?
I'd say it's possible, but only when it suits their primary interest. And I sure as hell wouldn't trust it.
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Really? Is it possible for a profit motivated organisation to be benign?
If you buy a burger for lunch, do you consider the seller of the burger to be malign? Even though they probably turned up to either make a paycheck or profit rather than an altruistic desire to feed you that day? It is the normal course of most people's day to provide a good or service in order to make gain, whether they provide it to an employer or to the general public. It is generally considered the most likely way to persuade others to give you money is to provide some sort of value. Unless you can get
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Do you give the burger seller more power over you than necessary? Are you willing to be the burger seller's product?
I have no problem with the concept of business. What worries me is businesses who gain power over governments while maintaining their for-profit motivations. As a motivation, for-profit isn't inherently malign, but it certainly is non-benign. As far as I can tell, nobody's even pretending that corporate motivations are benign, but we tend to lose sight of that when discussing the merits of the
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Big brother is only as transparent and benign as he/it wants to be.
Benevolent dictatorship is still dictatorship. The vassals are still subject to the whims of the master.
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Good middle ground. (Score:2)
The FAQ is interesting. [google.com] The majority
Re:Good middle ground. (Score:4, Informative)
"I guess we can't have a completely free internet (Google self censors);
You're free to post anything you want on your site, within the laws of your country. Move to the right country and you're totally free to post anything.
Google is also free to -not- post things to their site that they don't want to.
Sounds like it's 'completely free' to me.
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If you are in a minority that believes Child Porn is OK and Hate speech is OK...
I don't believe those things are OK, but I do know that censorship is much worse. Find another way to deal with the problem..
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Speech of any kind should be ok. Speech never harms anyone - actions do. The state (of any nation) has no business limiting any speech, unless it is slanderous.
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You said it well (Score:2)
pleasantly surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
google could have so easily gone the traditional "sacrifice all your values for the pursuit of money route", but they actually showed they have principles and a backbone
google, you've earned my loyalty and respect. integrity: what a rare and wonderful concept
as for china considering censorship requests to be state secrets: well of course it does. just like the church of scientology considers its sacred texts to be intellectual property. i mean, if you're going to be a controlling asshole, at least be true to the concept to the inevitable extreme of absurdity, right?
wikileaks: get that list of censorship requests. google, give that list up: you've already burned your bridges
oh, and btw: fuck you censorial controlling assholes. you are clearly on the losing side of history. i look forward to your inevitable demise
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I think you got "intellectual property" and "sacred texts" mixed up there.
i didn't get them mixed up (Score:2)
scientology did
no seriously, they consider their sacred text to be intellectual property you can't view without their permission (because they charge their members hundreds of thousands to view it)
i'm not joking, they really do this, and what blows my mind is that there are suckers out there who do work years of their lives to find out details of a bad sci fi story
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It just occurred to me that I haven't heard the old chestnut, "Honesty is the best policy" in years - possibly a decade.
It's a succinct, pragmatic statement, formal in nature, and it fits nicely with solid business practice. Too bad the majority of managers in the corporate world are too clever to understand it.
I would like more information... (Score:2)
Like why they were taken down...
Blogs taken down because of slander or libel.
Add taken off because of false advertising
Search terms that are using in pedophile.
I would like to see why they were down more then how much was taken down. I want to know what is being censored not how much we are censoring it.
It's going to be a pretty good day (Score:4, Funny)
One day, possibly not long from now, we're going to see China freed from the dictatorial, self-serving government Mao imposed on it.
That's going to be a pretty good day.
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Schadenfreude moderation? Perhaps. Personally, I think it's funny for the same reason the following is funny:
It's just too
Brazil (Score:4, Interesting)
A quick look at the tool shows that Brazil is the top country in both categories (largely because Orkut is popular there)
The reason Brazil is the top country is not only due to Orkut's popularity, but because many Brazilian laws were designed to limit freedom of speech and free enterprise. Anyone remember this [slashdot.org]?
A significant part of these government requests is probably tied to lawsuits involving Adwords. In the past, companies have been sued and found guilty for using their competitors' names as keywords in Adwords, for example. This practice is perfectly legal in most countries, including the US.
I wonder if Google can make this popular enough to pressure countries into changing their laws.
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Yes, I forgot to mention this in my previous reply.
I personally think it's very "amusing" to read the law where it says that freedom of expression is guaranteed but anonomity is forbidden. No anonimity boils down to no freedom of expression, because your freedom is limited by whatever the judge's interpretation of the law is.
Again, I really wish all these issues are brought to light by someone. Maybe Brazil is next in Google's crusade against censorship?
I imagine their actions could potentially be more succ
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What about showing nudity? And that, without even touching what one country or another could consider child porn, or forbidden practices by religion and/or law that could look innocent to you, dont know, like pork eating.not using veil or drawing Muhammad.
And what if is l
Great, it's aborted before it begins (Score:4, Insightful)
Without China, other governments will get the same idea, and the tool becomes completely useless. C'mon Google, grow some balls.
Brazilian Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Brazilian, I'm glad this exposes a situation which isn't usually discussed but should be given more attention now that Brazil is trying to gain additional worldwide relevance (through G20 and all that).
Brazilian courts have been extremely unreasonable and have forced Google to hand over private information and take down pages without much fanfare. Even though none of the data is actually hosted in Brazil, the courts have fined and threatened to fine Google several times because of this.
In Brazil, service providers have liability for their users actions and there are laws protecting the "private image" of individuals (even celebrities). In effect, paparazzi can be sued around here. Journalists can be sued and bloggers aren't considered journalists. Writing a story denouncing a politician can get you a lawsuit.
All this mess accounts for a lot of these requests. Google isn't being evil, but I wish there was more international pressure against the Brazilian government.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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I wish you well in your efforts (Score:2)
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Most of those requests are for orkurt (about 200). Orkurt is really only big in Brazil... so if you exclude those, the numbers are pretty similar to every other country.
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Anonymity is not allowed under Brazilian law because you have the right response on anything that was said about you, if what is published is different from reality. And I think it's quite fair...
You don't need to know *who* is saying bad things about you in order to be able to deny those things. You only need to know who said if you want some sort of revenge. When someone is publishing a story about a corrupt politician, what matters is the fact that he is corrupt, not who is publishing the story.
This sort of "right of revenge" severely hinders free speech.
I don't get it. (Score:2)
If Google pulls out and leaves China, what happens? I really don’t know. Are there Chinese people currently employed by Google? I suppose. Would they be in legal trouble if Google ditched them and left? They might. But I blame the Chinese government, not Google. It is not Google’s job to protect its Chinese employees from the tyranny of their own government. It is the Chinese people’s job to do that, and maybe if things get bad enough they’ll wake up and see this. And if things get R
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If something Google does results in its employees' imprisonment then a) that undermines the faith that Google employees place
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Alternatively, fire all the Chinese employees for being "economically unviable", pull out of China, and publish a list of all of the Chinese employees (and their current status) so that when they start having "accidents", people notice. Follow that action with publishing all the crap that China doesn't want Google to publish, and making a global laughingstock of the Chinese government (not to mention potential international outrage and/or human rights investigations at what was being censored).
It would suck
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Oh and the term you were looking for here is 'gwailo' (or 'gweilo') not 'gaijin'.
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I'm not surprised. (Score:2)
Weird stats for Israel? (Score:2)
Israel has surprisingly few requests overall - 30 data and 10 removal requests - that's less than e.g. Canada on both counts! I would have expected that them to be be much more prolific with data requests, given their circumstances. I mean, it's a state for which "war on terror" is not an imaginary thing to scare voters into submission, but a very real part of day-to-day-life.
However, what's really weird is that only 20% of removal requests were complied with - and it seems to be the lowest figure overall (
Corporate Requests? (Score:2)
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March 30, 2010: Mainland China blocks all Google service. The block only lasted a day.
Beijing used a lot of harsh words, but in the end Google and all their employee in PRC were not prosecuted and they continue to operate without censorship on Chinese soil. Google - 1, China - 0 so far.
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March 22, 2010: Google starts redirecting all traffic to their uncensored Google Hong Kong.
March 30, 2010: Mainland China blocks all Google service. The block only lasted a day.
Beijing used a lot of harsh words, but in the end Google and all their employee in PRC were not prosecuted and they continue to operate without censorship on Chinese soil. Google - 1, China - 0 so far.
I'd like to be all snarky and groupthink, and throw out a "[citation needed]", but in all honesty, I'd just like links to verify the information. Yeah, yeah, I could "just google it", but why should I go to all that effort, when I haven't even bothered to actually read the article?
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(Example criticism: "The Chinese government is run by cowardly barbarians. They are proved to be cowards because they are afraid to let their citizens have guns; they are proved to be barbarians because they think their political views are the only ones that matte
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sounds like a job for a botnet of virus infested illegal copies of XP that are just waiting for a higher purpose for their utilization. Heh, might even motivate them to get them dis-infected.
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For once, really for this once...
...Googol is getting a thumbs-up from me. WTG Mountain View !
--
Did you read your daily poem ? [google.com]
"Just this once!" says the guy with the google link in his sig... uh huh.
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what do expect when we mortgaged our country to them?