Viewpoint: Who runs the world? Google
Google can determine what does -- and what doesn't -- show up in your search.
When you hear "government censorship is on the rise," chances are you think of countries such as China or North Korea -- nations known for their totalitarian restrictions on freedom of expression.
According to the most recent Google Transparency Report, however, government censorship is on the rise most notably in Western democracies whose requests for content removal from Google search results or Google-operated sites have continued to increase since Google began releasing the transparency reports in 2010.
Like all of the previous data sets that have been released, Google once again received requests from prominent Western democracies to remove political speech, Google Senior Policy Analyst Dorothy Chou wrote in a blog post Sunday night.
“We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services,” Chou said. “We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it’s not.”
While the results may not be all that surprising, Chou writes that the fact that many requests come from Western democracies -- where free expression is a pillar of society -- is alarming.
The United States, for example, issued 187 requests during the July to December 2011 time frame compared to 92 from January to June 2011. That’s an increase of about 100%.
Yet, while much of the attention paid to the transparency reports focuses on the increase of government censorship, it is also imperative to take note of Google’s role in maintaining a free Internet while under the umbrella of government requests.
The transparency reports provide a glimpse into just how much reign Google possesses in our digitally driven world and our thirst for instantaneous information. Google is, in many ways, the arbiter when it comes to freedom of expression.
As The Atlantic’s Rebecca J. Rosen writes, “Google is not a court but it is playing the role of one, and the issues it must navigate are not easy, nor are they inconsequential.”
The company must review thousands of requests from countries around the world, all possessing different views and laws regarding free speech.
During the July to December 2011 time frame, Google received four requests from the government of Thailand to remove 149 YouTube videos that allegedly insulted the monarchy. Where such videos are protected under American conception of free speech, they are in violation of Thailand’s lèse-majesté law. Thus, 70% of the videos were restricted.
The debate surrounding the videos in Thailand -- content removal requests regarding political speech -- is one that Google must address each day. Does this violate local law? How can we reconcile government censorship with the desire to uphold freedom of expression?
In most cases, Google’s commitment for free speech prevails.
“We received a request from the Passport Canada office to remove a YouTube video of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet,” Google said. “We did not comply with this request.”
Even in countries not known for their strong promotion of free speech, Google puts the human right of free expression above the government’s desire to remove political criticism from the Internet.
In Pakistan, for example, Google “received a request from the Government of Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology to remove six YouTube videos that satirized the Pakistan Army and senior politicians.” The company did not honor that request.
“At Google, we have a bias in favor of free expression -- not just because it’s a key tenet of free societies, but also because more information generally means more choice, more power, more economic opportunity and more freedom for people,” Rachel Whetstone, senior vice president of global communications and public policy at Google wrote in a blog post this past March.
As more transparency reports are released and more removal requests by Western democracies are disclosed, the fight to preserve free expression on the Internet and the power Google yields in upholding our basic human right will become more apparent. With that, we as champions of free speech can thank Google for its counter-efforts of censorship and upholding the great responsibility it has to do so.
Amanda Kelly is a Summer 2012 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here.
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.