Steady rise in government requests for user data: Google

BANGALORE, INDIA: There has been a steady increase in government requests for user data during the second half of 2012, finds Google in its latest 'Transparency Report'.

"The steady increase in government requests for our users' data continued in the second half of 2012, as usage of our services continued to grow," said Richard Salgado, Google's head of law enforcement and information security in a post on Google's official blog.

Google, which has been sharing such data since 2010, finds that the most number of requests, 8,438 requests, came from the United States seeking information about 14,868 users, followed by India with 2,431 requests for data about 4,106 users.

Sixty eight per cent of the requests Google received from government entities in the U.S. were through subpoenas. These are requests for user-identifying information, issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act ("ECPA"), and are the easiest to get because they typically don't involve judges.

User data requests of all kinds have increased by more than 70 per cent since 2009. In total, we received 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 users from July through December 2012, he added.