Request from Cyprus goverment to remove names of disputed territories from Google Maps

Government Requests to Remove Online Material Increase at Google.
Governments, led by the United States, are increasingly demanding that Google remove information from the Web.

The company received 3,846 such requests to remove 24,737 items in the first half of 2013, an increase of 68 percent over the second half of 2012, according to an update to Google’s transparency report released on Thursday. Google complied with more than a third of all requests.

Often, the requests come from judges, police officers and politicians trying to hide information that is critical of them. The most common request cites defamation, often of officials. Others cite local laws governing religion or hate speech, for instance, as when YouTube received requests to remove the “Innocence of Muslims” video clips.

“Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content,” Susan Infantino, a legal director at Google, wrote in a company blog post.

Joe Kava, Google’s vice president of data centers, at a facility in Taiwan on Dec. 11. The company said government officials are resorting to new legal methods to demand that Google remove content.

This transparency report data is separate from Google’s reporting on government requests for user data, like those from the National Security Agency. In November, Google reported that such requests increased 21 percent worldwide in the first half of the year, and that 10,918 came from the United States government, not counting the national security requests that the government bars companies from reporting.

Government requests to remove information increased most significantly in Turkey and Russia because of online censorship laws, according to Google. Requests in the United States increased 70 percent, and requests in France increased 81 percent.

Google also said officials were resorting to new legal methods to demand that Google remove content, such as citing copyright law to take down transcripts of political speeches or government news  releases.

The 64 percent of requests that Google did not comply with included a phone call from Argentina asking for the removal of a Google autocomplete entry linking a politician’s name with an illicit drug, a request from Cyprus to remove names of disputed territories from Google Maps and an American police officer’s request to remove a link to a newspaper article about his professional record.

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By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
bits.blogs.nytimes.com