Global General

Google censorship data puts focus on Web checks

By QIN JIZE (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-23 08:24

BEIJING -- Internet search giant Google on Wednesday released details of governments worldwide that sought to censor its services or requested personal information about its users -- a move that draws public attention once again to the issue of cyber space management, analysts said.

The company published league tables showing which governments issued the most demands for content to be removed from its web sites in the second half of last year, or made the most requests for information about users of Google products for criminal investigation.

Brazil topped both lists, with the United States and India also figuring prominently and the United Kingdom and Germany the most active among European nations.

Information on China's censorship is unavailable and regarded as a state secret, according to Google.

Pang Zhongying, a researcher on international studies, said the report showed that China wasn't the only country where Google had to put local authorities' concerns into consideration over its content.

"The whole world is regulating Google on the basis of every country's own national condition," Pang said, noting the lack of common global management of cyber space was the cause of the current situation.

He said respective national regulation of Internet content was very important and necessary.

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 moved its Chinese web search service to Hong Kong last month to escape censorship after a two-month dispute with Beijing as the government said Google broke its own promise and was wrong.

The conflict even affected relations between China and the US.

In another development, a group of 10 countries has called on Google to build more privacy protections into its services and warned that the US-based search giant has put technological innovation above these protections.

Government officials from Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom, signed a letter that mostly focuses around the rollout of Google Buzz, a social networking and messaging tool.

They also challenged Google over the Street View feature in Google Maps, noting that the company launched the service "without due consideration of privacy and data protection laws and cultural norms."

Agencies contributed to the story.