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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.

Twitter said in its first transparency report that the number of government requests for user information or to block content is rising in 2012. "We've received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011," Twitter's legal policy manager Jeremy Kessel said in a blog post on Monday. The overwhelming number of requests came from the United States, accounting for 679 of the 849 requests for user information. In 75 per cent of the US cases, Twitter gave some or all information.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Laboring in the blackberry fields of central Arkansas, the 18-year-old Mexican immigrant suddenly turned ill. Her nose began to bleed, her skin developed a rash, and she vomited. The doctor told her it was most likely flu or bacterial infection, but farmworker Tania Banda-Rodriguez suspected pesticides. Under federal law, growers must promptly report the chemicals they spray. It took the worker, and a Tennessee legal services lawyer helping her, six months to learn precisely what chemical doused those blackberry fields. The company ignored her requests for the information.

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.