Checks, Balances and Requests
Talk about checks and balances…and Open Government, for that matter.
Google Inc., which has been in the news for quite a few censorship and government scandals recently, has launched an online tool which tracks government requests to remove content or reveal personal information about users. While they aren’t turning down governments for some of these requests, they are making that information publicly available, which is a pretty cool check on government, even if it only shares the numbers and not details about the specific requests. They do, however, list out if requests were fully or partially complied with, whether there was a court order, and what kinds of requests they were, such as “blogger,” “Google Video,” or anything else under the sun really.
“Power ought to serve as a check to power.”- Montesquieau
And boy is Google powerful. Baron de Montesquieau would be proud.
A lot of the requests are likely to be pretty legitimate, such as tracking down information on criminals or taking down child pornography, but what else is being taken down or requested?
Some numbers you might care about:
United States
- Removal Requests: 123
- Data Requests: 3580
China
- There is a red question mark and the note reads: “Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time.”
So my questions are: do you think this is a good check on government? Do you think it might somehow jeopardize security if companies reveal this information, even if it is minimal?
Tags: australia, checks and balances, china, data, google, montesquieau, open government, removal, united states