Western Democracies Continue their Attempts to Filter Google

Google has recently disclosed how many takedown notices the company has got from government agencies. The search engine confessed that it has received over 1,000 requests within 6 months from the governments to take down data from its search results or YouTube video.

Google slammed a so-called alarming trend by governments to try and censor the people. The company published its twice-yearly Transparency Report, saying that the above mentioned requests were aimed at having around 12,000 items overall deleted. This figure was 25% more than during the first 6 months of 2011. This means that the government agencies are getting a taste for censorship.

Google’s senior policy analyst admitted they hoped the rise earlier in 2011 had been a one off, but it appeared that it hadn’t. Plenty of the requests were aimed at silencing political speech. The most interesting part is that they came from Western governments, which are not usually associated with filtering.

Although Google didn’t list anything specific, the search engine still said that it was really surprised by the UK and the US spending most of their time trying to censor websites. The United States was said to be especially bad. The company complained that police prosecutors, courts and other agencies submitted almost 200 requests within the last 6 months of 2011, which doubles the number of the requests submitted in the first 6 months.

Meanwhile, Spain asked Google to take down 270 links to blogs and newspaper articles which criticized public figures, the list including mayors and public prosecutors. However, the search giant said no to that one. In response, a couple months ago the highest court of the country asked the European Court of Justice to find out whether the requests submitted by citizens to removed the links were lawful.

The company admits that in some countries it has no choice but to comply with these requests, because some types of political speech are against the law there. For instance, in Germany Google removed videos from YouTube with Nazi references as those were banned. Another example is Thailand videos that feature the monarch with a seat over his head – they were also removed for being insulting.

Finally, one takedown request came from Canada, where the company was asked by the authorities to remove a YouTube video featuring a citizen having a nintendo on his passport and flushing it down the loo. The search giant said no to this one as well.

Julian Assange Hides in Embassy

WikiLeaks founder seems to have broken his bail conditions and ran to Ecuador’s embassy in London to ask for asylum. In other words, he didn’t actually care about people who raised £200,000 bail for him and legged it when he had the opportunity.

Julian Assange is currently trying to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex crime accusations. He believes that if he is extradited there, the Swedes will hand him over to the United States, where he will face spying charges. Meanwhile, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister announced that his country would weigh the request from Assange. WikiLeaks founder has been fighting extradition to Sweden for a year and a half. He was accused of rape and sexual assault by his two female former volunteers.

It is clear why Assange picked Ecuador – this country has a leftist and anti-Washington president. While Julian might miff the US over the move, he has also embarrassed the UK government and may well have caused his wealthy backers to lose their bail money. In addition, the risk remains that Ecuador might not want to help him – the country invited WikiLeaks founder a few years ago to seek residency, but then it quickly backed away from the proposal, accusing Assange of breaking American laws.

Today Ecuador claims that Julian’s application for protective asylum shouldn’t be regarded as the Government of Ecuador interfering in the judicial processes of either the UK or Sweden.

Although Ecuador has an extradition treaty with the United States, it doesn’t cover political charges, so the country has to satisfy itself that the charges against WikiLeaks founder are political rather than criminal. However, this might appear not that easy, because Assange hasn’t been charged with a political crime. Meanwhile, Assange moaned that his native country of Australia had refused to defend him, though the country promised to continue assisting Assange, since it opposed any extradition of its citizens on charges which carry the death penalty.

WikiLeaks founder fears extradition to the United States, where espionage and treason are punished with the death penalty, while Sweden doesn’t have the death penalty. Moreover, neither Sweden nor the US has even charged him with treason or spying.

As for the attorney of the plaintiffs, Assange’s latest move was no surprise for him, but he expected Ecuador to reject the request.