Google widens focus on censorship attempts
By Richard Waters in San Francisco 2010-04-21

Google on Tuesday shone a spotlight on governments that seek to censor its services or request personal information about its users.

The internet search company published league tables showing which governments issued the most demands for information to be removed from one of its services in the second half of last year, or made the most requests for information to help with criminal investigations.

Brazil topped both lists, with the US and India also figuring prominently and the UK and Germany the most active among European nations.

China was excluded because censorship demands there were treated as state secrets, Google said.

Coming the month after it moved its Chinese web search service to Hong Kong to escape censorship, Google painted yesterday’s move as part of a wider effort to push back against growing global restrictions on internet freedom.

However, it was quick to reject any suggestion of over-reach and denied that it was putting pressure on governments to take a more relaxed stance.

“We are not intending to change government behaviour – but we are intending to give citizens more information about what their governments are doing,” said Google.

Many requests from governments for removal of information involve child pornography or other illegal material. Some countries have particular national rules, such as Germany’s ban on the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

Google’s rankings showed the 188 censorship demands by German authorities were topped only by the 291 in Brazil. The UK was the second most active in Europe, with 59.

Brazil and the US both issued more than 3,500 requests for personal information about users to help in investigations, with the UK making 1,166 requests and India 1,061.