More data, more transparency around government requests

Hungry Man · Oct 25, 2011

More data, more transparency around government requests

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/more-data-more-transparency-around.html

Today we’re updating the Government Requests tool with numbers for requests that we received from January to June 2011. For the first time, we’re not only disclosing the number of requests for user data, but we’re showing the number of users or accounts that are specified in those requests too. We also recently released the raw data behind the requests. Interested developers and researchers can now take this data and revisualize it in different ways, or mash it up with information from other organizations to test and draw up new hypotheses about government behaviors online.

We believe that providing this level of detail highlights the need to modernize laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which regulates government access to user information and was written 25 years ago—long before the average person had ever heard of email. Yet at the end of the day, the information that we’re disclosing offers only a limited snapshot. We hope others join us in the effort to provide more transparency, so we’ll be better able to see the bigger picture of how regulatory environments affect the entire web.
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dw426 · Oct 25, 2011

They're right, it's hilariously limited.

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More data, more transparency around government requests

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More data, more transparency around government requests

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