Google: “Freedom of Expression is at Risk”

Google announced in its bi-annual transparency report Monday that there has been an "alarming" increase in censorship of internet content. According to this report, the number of times governments attempted to censor internet content, particularly political content, has rapidly increased in the past six months.

The report shows that most of the governments requesting removal of content are Western democracies, all of whom possess some form of legislation protecting freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

Dorothy Chou, Google's senior policy analyst, told the Guardian: "When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not...This is the fifth data set that we've released...It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect - western democracies not typically associated with censorship."

According to Reuters, countries such as Spain, Germany, United Kingdom and Canada have all requested removal of content including political speeches, information and criticisms against the government.

Over the past six months Google adhered to around 65 percent of court orders and 47 percent of informal requests of content removal. There has also been an increase in the number of people and companies claiming removal of content on grounds of copy right issues.

The types of content include personal blogs, websites and also videos on YouTube.

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