Over the years, Google has tried to guard itself against the inspection of governments and other powerful organizations alike. It has also been publishing its Transparency reports on a regular basis to tell the world who wants it to cough up what information. Sadly, U.S. tops that list and is often successful in retrieving the information it requires.
To make things clearer, these requests made by the U.S. government seek access to the personal data of the users. From July 2012 to December 2012 alone, the US government has sought from Google to release the personal, confidential information of some 14,791 individuals.
The tricky thing about these requests is that US government backs them up with adequate legal support so that Google is forced to comply with them. However, at the same time, we can’t overlook the fact that the government couldn’t have possibly found a criminal in all 14,791 of these individuals.
And still, when it came to demand their personal information, the government procured search warrants with 3,152 of these requests, subpoenas with another 10,390 of them and court orders accompanied the rest of the 1,249 requests. In other words, the legal authorities provided all the cannon and fodder to allow the U.S. government to snoop into the personal information of individuals without any fear of repercussions.
The good thing is that at least Google attempts to highlight these issues by including them in its Transparency Report. Nonetheless, that warrants the question that will such public revelation of stats persuade the government from using tactics in orders to lay its hands on whatever information it wants from companies such as Google?
Source: Google
Courtesy: Engadget
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