Google Releases Transparency Report Showing US Surveillance Requests Up 33% in the Last Year
Two Out of Every Three US Demands to Google Come Without A Warrant
By Trevor Timm | Electronic Frontier Foundation | January 23, 2013
This morning, Google released their semi-annual transparency report, and once again, it revealed a troubling trend: Internet surveillance around the world continues to rise, with the United States leading the way in demands for user data.
Google received over 21,000 requests for data on over 33,000 users in the last six months from governments around the world, a 70% increase since Google started releasing numbers in 2010. The United States accounted for almost 40% the total requests (8,438) and the number of users (14,791). The total numbers in the US for 2012 amounted to a 33% increase from 2011. And while Google only complied with two-thirds of the total requests globally, they complied with 88% of the requests in the United States.
Admirably, Google expanded their transparency report this time around, providing more detailed information about what kind of requests they get from the US government—specifically the type of requests they get under the main email privacy law in the US, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
EFF has long criticized ECPA for not providing email with the same warrant protection as the Fourth Amendment gives to physical letters and phone calls. The Justice Department believes that it doesn’t need a warrant for emails over 180 days. Google’s lawyers, to their credit, have criticized the law as well, saying just this week, “our view is that [ECPA] is out of compliance with the Fourth Amendment because the government can call for the production of your data without a search warrant.”

Reblogged this on Dogma and Geopolitics.
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