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Social networking giant Twitter has released a new report outlining all subpoenaed, court ordered, and search warranted requests made by the U.S. government for private information about the site's users throughout the past year. And based on the figures, not only is the overall number of such requests steadily expanding, but Twitter is also increasingly being coerced into releasing this confidential data without legitimate probable cause or warrant.

Google and the Google-owned YouTube received more than 10,000 requests for user data from government agencies in the six months ending Dec. 31, 2009, according to newly released data.

"Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products," Google says on a new site that sheds more light onto government demands for user information and requests to take offensive material off the Web.

Google only gave the Brazilian government information in 76% of the 1,804 cases in which the country requested it, and for only 72% of the U.K.’s 1,162 requests. It took an even stronger line against countries like Poland, Hungary and Turkey, giving over data in only 33 times out of the 272 in which Poland requested it, and in none of the 45 Turkish or 68 Hungarian requests.

Google now posts regular "Transparency Reports" the include not only private content removal requests but also requests made by the US Government via court orders and law enforcement officials. The breakdown shows requests to remove content (mostly on YouTube) due to various reasons such as violence, privacy, and defamation.

The most interesting stat is that Google has complied with only 42% of the requests.

Hey Google is actually giving stats on how many requests they get from governments to supress or delete url from the search engine. Unfortunately no stats on China...

The "Department of Homeland Security" has been politically filtering out Freedom of Information Act requests, based on who's asking and how "politically sensitive" (read: embarrassing) the request is. When caught they stopped, says the AP.

During Thursday night's vice presidential debate, Vice President Joe Biden attacked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for criticizing the president's stimulus act despite having sent two separate requests for stimulus funds for his district. Biden was wrong. Ryan sent at least four requests. A Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence between Ryan's office and the Environmental Protection Agency, filed by The Huffington Post, unearthed two additional instances in which the Wisconsin Republican petitioned for American Recovery Act funds.

Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made more than 1.3 million requests for consumers’ cellphone records in 2011, an alarming surge over previous years that reflected the increasingly gray area between privacy and technology. Cellphone carriers, responding to inquiries from a member of Congress, reported responding to as many as thousands of police requests daily for customers’ locations, text messages and call details, frequently without warrants.

In a piece titled, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood," the Journal News requested the names and addresses of local residents who are licensed to own handguns through Freedom of Information Law requests. The paper requested information from Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. The paper was only given the names and addresses of those who have a license to own a handgun. The paper was denied its requests for the amount and type of guns owned by those who have licenses.