Government Requests To Take Down Content at a Record High, Says Google Report

Government entities are becoming increasingly authoritarian when it comes to requesting the takedown of content, according to tech giant Google.

The company's latest Transparency Report reveals that governments worldwide sent 3,846 requests to Google to remove content from its services. This year's figure has risen 68 percent compared with the second half of 2012, Bloomberg reported.

Of the requests, 3 percent were obviously related to government criticism, and Google complied with less than a third of those.

"Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content," the company's legal director, Susan Infantino, said in a blog post.

"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."

For the United States, requests rose 70 percent year-over-year for 545 requests total, making the country second highest on the list. Few of the requests were for items with government criticism, most seeming to be related to defamation.

But governments are sometimes using deceptive ways to ask that content be removed.

"These officials often cite defamation, privacy and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from our services," Infantino said.

Google is becoming more reluctant to comply with government requests, removing content in only half the cases this year, compared with 80 percent in 2009.

Europe has become more of a concern when it comes to political requests, said Mike Harris, head of advocacy at campaign group Index on Censorship.

"Insulting a government official is being used as a pretext for takedowns," he said. "The European Commission on Human Rights has made it very clear that politicians should be subject to wider criticism than ordinary individuals."

Harris noted that the "culture of intolerance" has been growing as people want to censor more and more content.

"We've got to be very careful," he said. "In the US, if we're talking about the First Amendment, which is the crux of the US constitution, then everyone needs to be concerned about takedowns."