Google reveals statistics on government requests of its data
google.com
google.com
I wonder if this information for China were released if there would be much outrage... I can imagine:
-Outrage with Google for how often they complied
-Outrage at China for the sheer number of requests
-Outrage at China for the types of content removed
All in all, releasing that information would probably hurt Google far more than it would hurt China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_...
More specifically:
"On 17 Oct 2009, Reuters reported that Guo Quan a professor in Nanjing Teachers University was sentenced to 10 years in jail for "inciting Subversion" of Government. There are more than 40 people in jail for criticizing the government."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_...
Threatening to provide or actually providing uncensored search results to the public could certainly be construed as inciting subversion.
Do you know the full story of the 40 people in jail for criticizing the government? Do you know the population in China? Do you know how many people are jailed in US because of Patriot Act, with no reason and no trial?
People like to bring this up, and I have a few things to say about it.
1) Just because the US does something, doesn't mean it's OK. We nuked fucking Japan. Doesn't make nuclear war OK.
2) The people held by the US are not citizens, they are soldiers picked up in war zones and held outside the US. Completely unacceptable? Yes. Violation of international law? Hopefully. But this is not what's going on in China. Normal citizens, with full rights under the law, are being openly convicted and suffering harsh penalties for speaking out against the government.
If the US government did what the Chinese government did, in this narrow category, the government officials would be the ones in prison. The US is far from perfect, but it is pretty good.
If you have credible evidence that Guo was a violent, extremist terrorist funded by the West, I'd love to see it.
"Normal citizens, with full rights under the law, are being openly convicted and suffering harsh penalties for speaking out against the government."
I would argue, in most cases, they are not normal citizens, even though in western media, they are portrait as freedom fighter. I can even tell you how to find information to prove this point: check out the China Study program in John Hopkins University (the top one in US), and they will tell you the conclusion in political science field is the freedom fighters from the Tiananman Square in 1989 are extremists. I don't think the reporters will go out and interview those political scientists. There are other good China Study program you can get academic opinions from, including Univ. of Iowa (another top 1), UW is good as well.
I am not arguing with you that there is no human right issue in China. There are, but the problem is presented out of the context and in many cases with false information. I am only suggesting that people do more firsthand investigation and talk to Chinese for some full stories, but looks like I am getting enough down-votes now.
From http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china... :
<blockquote>Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.</blockquote>
I won't even try to convince you with my opinion, just encourage you to talk to Chinese living in western countries to get a full story. Google has good information about "emotion" and it is a media company. A popular media theory is "if you control their emotion, you control their opinion."
Why do you think that China would never do anything to a Google employee if Google the company did something that China didn't like.
It has already happened in countries that are supposedly less strict than China, See the case of Italy issuing an arrest warrant for Google employee's due to a youtube video.
Yes, I can believe something like that could happen.
It could be a way to get back at google for defying them, for example.
You will have much better view of the whole story if you can read Chinese media, just for the full story. You might refuse to do so because they are controlled by the government. I ask you to talk to Chinese, you refuse as well because you think there is no need. How "sound" do you think your opinion will be?
I think Chinese tend to avoid talking shit about their country in front of foreigners to "save face". It seems to be part of the culture.
The law is pretty strict there about ownership and responsibility for what goes on on your servers.
How often are they complied with, and what data did they want? On what grounds?
I have yet to see anyone using a search engine that is not Google, and we have the majority of Orkut users (facebook, myspace? what's that?).
You don't hear about other video sites other than Youtube.
And there are only three types of emails in use: emails with more than 10 years from random domains, emails from Gmail and emails from Hotmail (and only because of the MSN messenger).
It's no surprise that our law enforcement has a really active connection with Google, especially because there's little fuss when important legislation regarding internet access passes, so it's a "nobody cares". But it's still scary to see the numbers.
eg: "We have a relatively high number of requests for information compared to other countries in part because we have such a large number of Brazilian users on orkut, our social networking site."
Brasil: 75% orkut
Germany: 52% web search, 38% YouTube
India: 84% orkut
US: 57% YouTube, 20% web search
Also, it used to have many security holes (maybe still has, I don't use it anymore) and Brazil has no shortage of script kiddies. So there many cases of hijacked accounts and communities.
For example, how about the number of requests per 100,000 Google "users" per service?
For example, the fact that they have tax parcel information showing up on the map in my neighborhood means that they also have the amount of taxes I paid, my name, and property value. I know this is all public information, but an "ordinary citizen" would have to walk to the courthouse and pay $1/page for a printed copy of the city records and then scan it back in. Did they really do this throughout the country?
This definitely isn't the case everywhere. My county (not a particularly tech savvy one) has it all available online on their own website, including full assessment information on the house, your name, amount you paid in taxes, etc.. You just type in the address you want. Or, you can search by name instead of address!
There would be no point in Iran requesting info and removals from Google. Google would ignore them at best, or worse, publish the requests and make Iranian govt look like idiots.