Requests from the US government for information about Google customers have increased by about 120% since the company first began publishing the numbers in 2009, the tech company said Thursday.
Google’s latest transparency report looks at requests by government agencies worldwide in criminal cases in the last six months of 2013. Google published a separate report in February about orders made during US national security investigations.
From July to December last year, US authorities made 10,574 requests for information about 18,254 accounts, the most of any country. France made the second most requests, with 2,750 requests for information about 3,378 accounts.
The report revealed that:
• Germany made 2,660 requests for information about 3,255 accounts
• India made 2,513 requests or information about 4,401 accounts
• United Kingdom made 1,397 requests for information about 3,142 accounts
• Brazil made 1,085 requests for information about 1,471 accounts
“While we’ve always known how important transparency is when it comes to government requests, the events of the past year have underscored just how urgent the issue is,” Richard Salgado, the legal director of law enforcement and information security wrote in a blogpost.
“Though our number of users has grown throughout the time period, we’re also seeing more and more governments start to exercise their authority to make requests,” he wrote.
“We consistently push back against overly broad requests for your personal information, but it’s also important for laws to explicitly protect you from government overreach. That’s why we’re working alongside eight other companies to push for surveillance reform, including more transparency.”
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and others have been pressing the US for greater transparency in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s operations.
The US recently allowed tech giants to disclose the broad number of national security letters (NSLs) they receive. NSLs are used to obtain information about a subscriber from telephone and internet companies and the companies had previously been barred from disclosing any details about them.
However, the tech firms want further reforms and met president Barack Obama last week to push for clearer limits on the information the US authorities can collect, more oversight and accountability.
