Worldwide government requests for user data increased 150% over five years: Google

Google Inc said yesterday that worldwide government requests for user data increased 150 per cent over five years, with the internet giant renewing its call for reforms to allow for greater disclosure, AFP reported.

Updating the company's twice-yearly ''transparency report,'' Google legal director Richard Salgado said the company had seen a 15 per cent increase since the second half of last year, and a 150 per cent jump since it first started publishing the data in 2009.

In the US, the increases were 19 per cent and 250 per cent, respectively, and did not include orders from a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or ''national security letters'' from the FBI.

He added this increase in government demands came against a backdrop of ongoing revelations about government surveillance programmes.

Despite these revelations, Google said it had seen some countries expand their surveillance authorities in an attempt to reach service providers outside their borders.

Salgado added that while governments had a legitimate and important role in fighting crime and investigating national security threats, reforms were needed for greater oversight and transparency ''to maintain public confidence in both government and technology.''

According to Google, it received 31,698 government data requests in the last six months of 2013, affecting around 48,000 accounts.

Meanwhile Ireland asked Google for information relating to Irish user accounts 10 times in the first six months of the year, www.breakingnews.ie reported.

The requests related to a range services including Gmail, YouTube and Google Docs.

Google's latest Transparency Report also showed that officials in Ireland made such requests less frequently than other authorities in Europe. There were only 10 requests in all for user data from 10 separate users, and according to Google, it complied with three of those.

Authorities in Ireland also made two requests for Google to take down content from their search results, and it complied with the requests.

There were no court orders asking for content removal, rather the requests came from either the government, police or similar authorities.