Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Google reveals government surveillance requests on the rise, led by the U.S.

Published Nov 15th, 2012 12:05PM EST
Government Surveillance Requests 2012

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Perhaps surprising no one, Google (GOOG) published its latest Transparency Report this week revealing it received 20,938 requests from governments around the world to hand over user data between January and June 2012. The bi-annual Transparency Report shows an increase of 2,681 requests since the last report and an increase of 5,194 requests from the same period a year ago.

Google says the requests were for account information on 34,614 accounts and that the United States led with 7,968 requests, India came in second with 2,319 requests and Brazil rounded out the top-three with 1,566 requests. The number of requests to actually remove content also spiked from 1,048 requests between July to December 2011 to 1,791 in the period ending last June.

The full report can be found here where Google breaks down all of the requests by country.

Raymond Wong is a technology reporter with a passion for cutting-edge gadgets and clean design. His writing has appeared on DVICE, Ubergizmo, G4TV, Yahoo News, NBC blogs. You might even have seen his videos on Xbox LIVE.