Thursday, 15 November 2012
According to the latest transparency report released by Google, India ranks second in the world for accessing private details of its citizens, only after the U.S. The Google report lists out requests it received from governments across the world to access details of users of its various services.
Google's
data reveals India had made 2,319 requests involving 3,467 users in the
first six months. The U.S. made 7,969 requests, while Brazil, which
ranks third, made 1,566 requests during the same period. Worldwide
20,938 requests were made during the January-June period. The report
says the information shared included complete Gmail account, chat logs,
Orkut profile and search terms among others.
The requests for accessing user data
from India had grown two-fold from 1,061 in July-December 2009 to 2,207
in July-December 2011, the report points out. According to the report, India has been
consistently sending requests to remove content which it brands as
defamatory and against national security. The court orders, however, to
take down content has remained almost stagnant over the years; though
requests from the executive and police have grown.
"Though India is a large country with a
significant number of internet users, this data is nonetheless an
indicator of growing surveillance," Times of India quotes
Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society (
CIS), a Bangalore-based organization looking at issues of public
accountability, internet freedom and openness, as saying.
