Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Least Intrusive Government....

...appears to be, not surprisingly, Switzerland, if a measure of requests by government agencies and federal courts around the world to remove content from Google and hand over user data, is employed as a guide.

Google posts the number of requests  that it receives from governments. Switzerland has not requested any data from Google or any removals. On an absolute number basis (rather than per capita), the United States has made the most requests.

(ViaMikeNelson)

3 comments:

  1. Not surprised.

    Having lived in Switzerland for extended periods of time and having traveled there on and off for almost 20 years, I can tell you the Swiss leave you the hell alone.
    I love that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Note that this is only for the period of July through December, 2010. There's 35 requests from Switzerland in the period between January and July, 2010, and 43 in the period from July through December 2009. That puts them about even with Canada as far as the total number of requests based on the available data.

    Clicking on a country name gives a little more detail as to what types of requests were made and to which Google services (YouTube, Blogger, GMail, etc.).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Acually, I'd guess that the countries that aren't mentioned in any of the historical data might be less intrusive (in terms of intrusions on Google for content removal or user data). I didn't see anything from Costa Rica, for instance, and Switzerland had 4 removal requests for 18 items.

    ReplyDelete