India second to US in seeking user information: Google

The Indian government made the second largest number of demands for web user information, next only to the US government, from Google, in the six-month period from January to June this year, the search engne giant disclosed said in its 'Transparency Report'.

In the six-month period, the Indian government, through court orders and police requests approached the company for user information 2,319 times over 3,467 users / accounts. Google fully or partially complied with 64 per cent of the requests.

The US government made more requests - 7,969 requests over 16,281 accounts -  for which Google complied with 90 per cent of them.

This comes as the sixth report of the kind which Google brings out bi-annually regarding its interactions with the world government agencies. Two categories of interactions are detailed in the report  - requests to divulge user data; and requests to pull down content.

India came in at the seventh spot in the list of requests to pull down data. According to experts, this was possibly due to the government not having such powers under the Indian Constitution.

According to Pranesh Prakash, policy director with Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, the Google report comes as a damning indictment of the country's government exceeding its constitutional bounds by demanding removal of material for defamation, government criticism, etc, without a valid court order. He added there were no laws in the country that allowed the executive or the police to remove such material.