Government requests to Google

Google has updated their transparency report for New Zealand. We learn:

•  There were five removal requests in 2011 – three from court orders and two from the Government (prob Police)
• Of the 13 requests since 2010, 23% were for defamation, 15% privacy and security, 8% hate speech and 8% violence
• The requests were for removal from web search, from Google Docs (once), Blogger and YouTube.

Their copyright page is also interesting. In just the last month they had requests for 8.5 million URLs to be removed.

It’s great that Google is transparent about the number and nature of requests for removal.