Data requests from Indian govt to Google up by 11% in 2013

The latest transparency report released by Google Inc,India is the second-highest when it comes to user data requests from the government to Google. USA is the first.

[caption id=“attachment_1231051” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption]

In the six month period of January to June 2013 evaluated by Google, Indian authorities made 2,691 requests, related to 4,161 users/accounts.

This number is a growth of around 11 percent since the last transparency report released by Google which covered July to December 2012.

Google complied with around 64 percent of the Indian requests.

Google is rebuffing governments more frequently as authorities in the US and other countries get more aggressive about mining the Internet for information about people’s online activities.

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Several other companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo, have since followed Google’s practice of disclosing government requests for personal data, which cover such things as email communications and the search queries made.

“And these numbers only include the requests we’re allowed to publish,” wrote Richard Salgado, Google’s legal director of law enforcement and information security.

Governments zero in on Google because its services have become staples of our digital-driven lives. Besides running the Internet’s most dominant search engine, Google owns the popular video site YouTube, operates blogging and email services and distributes Android, the top operating system on mobile phones. Google says its social network, Plus, now has 540 million active users.