Broadband Tech > Security > Security > The US Government's Growing Appetite for Google Users' Data

The US Government's Growing Appetite for Google Users' Data

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U.S. government and law enforcement agencies are increasingly asking Google to hand over data on its customers to help with investigations.

The search and ads company today released figures revealing that it was asked to hand over user data 7,969 times by US agencies in the first six months of 2012 - an increase of 26 percent over the previous six months. That continues a long established trend in the figures released in Google's twice-yearly transparency report and charted above. The 7,969 requests asked for data from a total of 16,281 user accounts, and ninety percent of the requests were complied with.

Google is unusual amongst Web companies in that it shares information about the number of such requests it receives. Social network Facebook is likely subject to a similarly high volume, for example, but does not disclose any information on their number or origin. Google started reporting the number of requests for its data in 2009, and the number of affected accounts in 2011. Since January 2011, U.S. authorities have requested data pertaining to a total of 39,581 accounts.

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One more reason to run a simple personal mail server locally.
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Keep it simple, it'll become complex by itself...

reply to goalieskates
Does BBR post it's requests?