Last week, Google published its first set of global government request statistics, showing how many demands it receives to remove content from its servers or hand over private information on its users. Transparency by Internet companies about how much information they are compelled to remove or release helps us understand how online journalism worldwide may be affected by state actions. Although Google acknowledges its initial figures are “imperfect,” they are an important first step, not least because they might encourage other companies to provide the same figures.
But what can we learn from the appearance of certain countries in Google’s tables? In particular, what of Brazil, which currently tops both data request and content removal charts for the sheer number of requests? Are Brazilian online journalists, their sources, and the availability of their work at greater risk of censorship and exposure than elsewhere in the world?
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