Google just published its annual “transparency report” (which is a contradictory term, considering what we now know about the company), and it was some interesting information about various governments requesting that Google remove certain sites from its listings. The usual suspects are there, of course; Russia, Turkey and others have requested that sites be removed so that their citizens have a harder time finding certain political content. This is expected, since they are known for suppressing free speech and press. What is perhaps not so expected—or even acceptable—is that the US government has done the same thing. In fact, the US has made the most requests of all besides Russia.
In just the first six months of 2013, Google received 545 requests from the US government for 3,887 items of a political nature to be removed from its search listings. One of these requests was from a law enforcement official who wanted a link to an article about his record as an official to be removed. Google denied that particular request, but honored many others.
“Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content. Judges have asked us to remove information that’s critical of them, police departments want us to take down videos or blogs that shine a light on their conduct, and local institutions like town councils don’t want people to be able to find information about their decision-making processes,” Susan Infantino, legal director, said in a blogpost.
“These officials often cite defamation, privacy and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from our services. In this particular reporting period, we received 93 requests to take down government criticism and removed content in response to less than one third of them. Four of the requests were submitted as copyright claims,” she said. [emphasis added]
The US government has absolutely no right to request that Google remove material on the internet that is critical of various government bodies, policies or actions. The fact that they are even asking is disturbing, but the fact that Google is acquiescing is even worse.
GWB says: If there is actual defamation on a website returned as a result in a search, then the person defamed can approach the website, itself. Google isn’t doing anything defamatory by returning the search result.
As far as privacy – there is none in your job as a government employee. Period. You don’t want people taking videos of you at a city council meeting? Fine. But you can’t demand Google take the video down unless you already have a court decision.
I wonder what the primary complaint was concerning political speech that they did pull? (And, if they pulled it for a legitimate copyight claim, then how would it fall into political speech? Was it a ‘political’ video that used a commercial song? I would hardly count that as ‘pulling political content’ unless there was a clear bias involved.)
My web site is hosted by Google, and I have pretty much had it with them. Anyone have suggestions for a new web host?
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