TORONTO – Government requests for user information have more than doubled over three years, according to Google’s latest transparency report.
“Since we began sharing these figures with you in 2010, requests from governments for user information have increased by more than 100 percent,” read a Google blog post regarding the report, released Thursday.
“This comes as usage of our services continues to grow, but also as more governments have made requests than ever before. And these numbers only include the requests we’re allowed to publish.”
The report reveals that Google has become less likely to comply with government demands for its users’ online communications and other activities as authorities in the U.S. and other countries become more aggressive about mining the Internet for personal data.
The breakdown shows Google Inc. received 25,879 legal requests from governments for people’s data during the first half of this year. That represented a 21 per cent increase from the last half of last year.
U.S. authorities accounted for 10,918 of the requests, more than any other country.
To compare, India – who came in second place for the most requests made – totalled 2,691 requests.
Germany, France, the U.K., Brazil, Italy, Spain, Australia and Poland made up the rest of the top ten countries requesting user information from January to June 2013, according to the report.
Canada placed only 49 requests during this time period – Google handed over data in 27 per cent of those cases.
Users can read Google’s full report about Canadian data on their website.
The report says Google is rejecting a higher percentage of the requests.
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