Google late Sunday night released its “Transparency Report,” which it said showed an “alarming” increase in government censorship requests. “This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked to take down political speech. It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect—Western democracies not typically associated with censorship,” Google Senior Policy Analyst Dorothy Chou wrote in a blog post.
Google said it complied with 42 percent of U.S. requests, removing 187 pieces of content.
