Between January and June this year, the Australian government asked Google for information on 361 user accounts, and Google coughed up in 73 per cent of those cases. Compared to the last half of last year, that’s a slightly higher number of requests, but Google actually handed over the data a bit less often.
In that preceding period, Google received 345 requests, but handed over the data 81 per cent of the time. Google also received 10 local requests for removal of content on its sites, virtually all of which related to YouTube, and which were split between defamation, pornography, security and hate speech. And just in case you were wondering, there’s no parallel data for New Zealand.
The overall percentage of requests accepted is on the high side (in the US, for instance, the figure is just 63 per cent). That might reflect Australian governments only making requests that are likely to be satisfied, rather than trying more opportunistically for data.
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