Google complied with 33% of Indian Removal Requests [Transparency Report]

The latest update on Google Transparency report is out, and as generally is the case, India remains one of the leading countries in regards to the Data removal requests. Infact, Indian ranks second after United states in the number of requests made.

Top 10 countries in terms of User Data Requests

User Data requests mean that a Government has asked for some information regarding a user or company who may have published some inflammatory or infringing data anonymously. Government can get a court order or furnish details about the infringing material and request user to give more details about the user.

In the period between July-December 2012, India made 2431 user data requests out which 66% were fully or partially complied with. During same period United States made 8438 requests out which nearly 89% requests were complied.

Removal Requests

Indian Government made total of 680 removal requests for the period between July-December 2012.

20 of them were made with the help of court orders, while 64 were made by Police and other authorized agencies and individuals. Here is the break-up of removal requests.

Reason	Court Orders	Executive, Police, etc.	Items Requested To Be Removed
Privacy and Security	1	10	374
Religious Offense	6	1	75
Other	–	8	12
Impersonation	–	6	9
Hate Speech	–	1	1
Adult Content	–	1	1
Defamation	13	35	120
National Security	–	1	3
Copyright	–	1	1
Total	20	64	596

Since Google Transparency report started offering reasons in July 2010, defamation and Privacy / Security were the mains reason why removal requests were made by Indian Government and agencies.

What is important though is that only 1 in 3 of these removal requests were complied by Google during the July-Dec 2012. Comparatively, US had 45 percent of their requests complied with!

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