Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, April 26, 2013

Google Transparency Report Reveals More Government Snooping Than Ever

google transparency report
A graph of content removal requests from Google.
World governments keep asking Google to remove content, and Google keeps tattling on them. In its latest transparency report, released Thursday, Google writes that the number of requests from governments to remove online content has grown. Between July and December 2012, Google received 2,285 requests to remove online content, compared with only 1,811 requests during the first six months of 2012. These numbers have been steadily growing since 2010.

Many of the removal requests were made in reference to "Innocence of Muslims," an offensive film on YouTube that caused a huge upheaval in the Muslim world. Google explained the situation in its transparency report:
During this period, we received inquiries from 20 countries regarding YouTube videos containing clips of the movie “Innocence of Muslims." While the videos were within our Community Guidelines, we restricted videos from view in several countries in accordance with local law after receiving formal legal complaints. We also temporarily restricted videos from view in Egypt and Libya due to the particularly difficult circumstances there.
The outrage was so great that the Egyptian government decided to ban all of YouTube, not just the one video, for a period of time in February (which doesn't fall within the six months Google examined).

Google has been releasing these transparency reports for 3 years, in an effort to shed light on the way global governments attempt to restrict the Internet and the way Google deals with issues of censorship. Google recently updated its traffic page to include more information about country-specific disruptions to Google services.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com
Author: Alexis Kleinman

No comments:

Post a Comment