Public Policy Blog
Updates on technology policy issues
Transparency Report: What it takes for governments to access personal information
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security
Today we’re releasing new data for the
Transparency Report
, showing that 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. We’ve shared figures like this
since 2010
because it’s important for people to understand how government actions affect them.
We’re always looking for ways to make the report even more informative. So for the first time we’re now
including
a breakdown of the kinds of legal process that government entities in the U.S. use when compelling communications and technology companies to hand over user data. From July through December 2012:
68 percent 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.
22 percent were through ECPA search warrants. These are, generally speaking, orders issued by judges under ECPA, based on a demonstration of “probable cause” to believe that certain information related to a crime is presently in the place to be searched.
The remaining 10 percent were mostly court orders issued under ECPA by judges or other processes that are difficult to categorize.
User data requests of all kinds have increased by more than 70 percent since 2009, as you can see in our new visualizations of overall trends. In total, we received 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 users from July through December 2012.
We’ll keep looking for more ways to inform you about government requests and how we handle them. We hope more companies and governments themselves join us in this effort by releasing similar kinds of data.
One last thing: You may have noticed that the latest Transparency Report doesn’t include new data on
content removals
. That’s because we’ve decided to release those numbers separately going forward. Stay tuned for that data.
Promoting civic innovation through technology
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Posted by Matthew Stepka, VP, Google.org
Cross-posted from the
Google.org blog
The Internet is redefining citizenship in the 21st century. Technology is helping people to connect, engage, and contribute to society and each other like never before.
We’ve seen developers use our
Civic Information API
to bring election data to citizens in new and exciting ways. Our live election results maps have been viewed by billions around the world, bringing real-time transparency to elections in Egypt, Mexico, Ghana, and more. Last week, we launched the
Kenya Elections Hub
for citizens to access the latest news and resources for the country’s presidential election.
Beyond elections, technology can improve everyday civic life: the way we connect, engage, access and act on critical government information. Worldwide, organizations are developing new ways to encourage more open and innovative societies. Google.org is supporting two of these leaders--the
Sunlight Foundation
and
mySociety
--and their work on tech solutions for civic innovation.
We are providing $2.1 million to the Sunlight Foundation to grow their programs for open government data, with a focus on making civic information for U.S. cities transparent, available, and useable. By opening up information at the city level for developers as well as citizens, Sunlight is creating opportunity for new ideas that can have an impact in local markets.
We are also supporting mySociety, providing $1.6 million to build a global platform to equip developers with tools and resources--such as open source code--to more easily and quickly launch new civic apps and services. This initiative can promote collaboration between civic-minded technologists, regardless of geography. For example, a civic app created in Finland might be easily replicated 9,000 miles away by a developer in Chile.
Both organizations are working to bring together a larger community--governments, developers, companies, nonprofits, and citizens--with an interest in improving societies. By creating these open platforms today, we can open doors to ambitious new solutions in the future.
The Federal Trade Commission closes its antitrust review
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today announced it has closed its investigation into Google after an exhaustive 19-month review that covered millions of pages of documents and involved many hours of testimony. The conclusion is clear: Google’s services are good for users and good for competition.
Larry and Sergey founded Google because they believed that building a great search experience would improve people’s lives. And in the decade-plus that’s followed, Google has worked hard to make it quicker and easier for users to find what they need. In the early days you would type in a query, we’d return 10 blue links and you’d have to click on them individually to find what you wanted. Today we can save you the hassle by providing direct answers to your questions, as well as links to other sites. So if you type in [weather san francisco], or [tom hanks movies], we now give you the answer right from the results page—because truly great search is all about turning your needs into actions in the blink of an eye.
As we made clear when the FTC started its investigation, we’ve always been open to improvements that would create a better experience. And today we’ve
written
(PDF) to the FTC making two voluntary product changes:
More choice for websites
: Websites can already
opt out of
Google Search, and they can now remove content (for example reviews) from specialized search results pages, such as local, travel and shopping;
More ad campaign control
: Advertisers can already
export their ad campaigns
from Google AdWords. They will now be able to mix and copy ad campaign data within third-party services that use our AdWords API.
In addition, we’ve
agreed with the FTC
(PDF) that we will seek to resolve standard-essential patent disputes through a neutral third party before seeking injunctions. This agreement establishes clear rules of the road for standards essential patents going forward.
We’ve always accepted that with success comes regulatory scrutiny. But we’re pleased that the FTC and the other authorities that have looked at Google's business practices—including the U.S. Department of Justice (in its
ITA Software
review), the U.S. courts (in the
SearchKing
and
Kinderstart
cases), and the Brazilian courts (in a
case last year
)—have concluded that we should be free to combine direct answers with web results. So we head into 2013 excited about our ability to innovate for the benefit of users everywhere.
Keep the Internet free and open
Monday, December 3, 2012
Posted by Vint Cerf, VP and Chief Internet Evangelist
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
)
Starting in 1973, when my colleagues and I proposed the technology behind the Internet, we advocated for an open standard to connect computer networks together. This wasn’t merely philosophical; it was also practical.
Our protocols were designed to make the networks of the Internet non-proprietary and interoperable. They avoided “lock-in,” and allowed for contributions from many sources. This openness is why the Internet creates so much value today. Because it is borderless and belongs to everyone, it has brought unprecedented freedoms to billions of people worldwide: the freedom to create and innovate, to organize and influence, to speak and be heard.
But starting in a few hours, a closed-door
meeting
of the world’s governments is taking place in Dubai, and regulation of the Internet is on the agenda. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is convening a conference from December 3-14 to revise a decades-old
treaty
, in which only governments have a vote. Some proposals could allow governments to justify the censorship of legitimate speech, or even cut off Internet access in their countries.
You can read more about my concerns on
CNN.com
, but I am not alone. So far, more than 1,000 organizations from more than 160 countries have
spoken up too
, and they’re joined by hundreds of thousands of Internet users who are standing up for a free and open Internet. On an interactive map at
freeandopenweb.com
, you can see that people from all corners of the world have signed our petition, used the #freeandopen hashtag on social media, or created and uploaded videos to say how important these issues are.
If you agree and want to support a free and open Internet too, I invite you to join us by signing the petition at
google.com/takeaction
. Please make your voice heard and spread the word.
VetNet: A place for veterans and military spouses to build civilian careers
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Posted by Andy Berndt, Creative Lab
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
For several years now, we’ve been working to help the veteran community through outreach programs and by connecting veterans and their families to useful Google products and services. For example, we’ve built tools like the
Veterans Job Bank
to connect veterans with employers, today populated with more than a million jobs. And we created a
Resume Builder
to help job-seekers represent their experience in just a few clicks with Google Docs.
After years of working with the community, we’ve come to realize that it isn’t more tools that are needed, but rather organizing the ones that already exist, and making them easier to find. Perhaps the most complex challenge facing the veteran community today is the sheer volume of resources available to help them transition to civilian life. While this abundance is the measure of a grateful nation, and a tribute to those who served, in the end, the most important result is individuals and families getting the help they need.
With this in mind, we’ve put the powers of
Google+
behind a single hub called
VetNet
. Today, VetNet launches as a partnership with three founding organizations: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s
Hiring Our Heroes
program, the
Institute for Veterans and Military Families
(IVMF) and
Hire Heroes USA
. In the long run, other organizations will be able to offer their services to the veteran community, all in the same easy-to-use place.
Through VetNet, these founding partners offer a full spectrum of employment resources for members of the community. Whether starting a job search from scratch, looking for mentors in a specific industry or starting a business, transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses will be able to connect with career services, job opportunities and each other.
All of the content and resources are organized into three tracks by objective, each hosted on its own Google+ page.
Basic Training Track
(
google.com/+VetNetBasic
): The place to start. From resumes to interviewing tips to advice from buddies. Dial into our first
Resume Workshop
today at 3pm EST.
Career Connections Track
(
google.com/+VetNetCareer
): Walmart, GE and Capital One are just a few of the companies that are participating in VetNet to help veterans and military spouses find civilian careers. Check out today’s
Vets In Finance panel
at 2pm EST.
Entrepreneur Track
(
google.com/+VetNetEntrepreneur
): An 8-week college-level course on the fundamentals of starting a business, starting next week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
To stay abreast of the most exciting events happening across all tracks, follow
+VetNetHQ
on Google+.
We’re proud to join forces with the Chamber, IVMF and Hire Heroes USA—to help them do what they do so well, and to simplify the process of finding and using resources for the veterans community. Our hope is simply to connect help to those who need it. If you’re a member of the community looking any career advice or help, get started at
VetNetHQ.com
. For those of us who have not served, please do what you can to spread word of VetNet to those who have.
Transparency Report: Government requests on the rise
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Posted by Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
We think it’s important to shine a light on how government actions could affect our users. When we first launched the
Transparency Report
in early 2010, there wasn’t much data out there about how governments sometimes hamper the free flow of information on the web. So we took our first step toward greater transparency by disclosing the number of government requests we received. At the time, we weren’t sure how things would look beyond that first snapshot, so we pledged to release numbers twice a year. Today we’re updating the Transparency Report with data about government requests from January to June 2012.
This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise. As you can see from the graph below, government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report. In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts.
The number of government requests to remove content from our services was largely flat from 2009 to 2011. But it’s spiked in this reporting period. In the first half of 2012, there were 1,791 requests from government officials around the world to remove 17,746 pieces of content.
You can see the country-by-country trends for requests to hand over
user data
and to
remove content
from our services in the Transparency Report itself, but in aggregate around the world, the numbers continue to go up.
As always, we continue to improve the Transparency Report with each data release. Like before, we’re including
annotations
for this time period with interesting facts. We’re also
showing new bar graphs
with data in addition to tables to better display content removal trends over time. We’ve now translated the entire Transparency Report into 40 languages, and we’ve expanded our FAQ—including one that explains how we sometimes
receive falsified court orders
asking us to remove content. We do our best to verify the legitimacy of the documents we receive, and if we determine that any are fake, we don’t comply.
The information we disclose is only an isolated sliver showing how governments interact with the Internet, since for the most part we don’t know what requests are made of other technology or telecommunications companies. But we’re heartened that in the past year, more companies like
Dropbox
,
LinkedIn
,
Sonic.net
and
Twitter
have begun to share their statistics too. Our hope is that over time, more data will bolster public debate about how we can best keep the Internet free and open.
Celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship with the new Google for Entrepreneurs
Monday, September 24, 2012
Posted by Mary Grove, Head of Global Entrepreneurship Outreach
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
Startups and entrepreneurs have the power to build technologies and creative solutions that transform the world and move us forward. Innovation is happening everywhere: There are approximately
400 million entrepreneurs across 54 countries
, and 69 million early-stage entrepreneurs offering new products and services. As Google turns 14 this month, we’re celebrating this creative spirit and officially launching
Google for Entrepreneurs
, the umbrella for our several dozen programs and partnerships around the world that support startups and entrepreneurs.
Our focus is threefold:
Partnerships with strong organizations that serve entrepreneurs in local communities
Google-led programs to bring our teams and our tools directly to entrepreneurs
Placing relevant Google tools in the hands of startups as they are getting off the ground and ready to scale
We’re already on a roll, with current projects ranging from support for the
annual journey of entrepreneurship
through India by train, to partnering with a number of accelerator and incubator programs around the world, like
iHub
in Kenya and
Le Camping
in France. And, this week, we’re rolling out our newest partnership: teaming up with Women 2.0 to bring their Founder Friday events to more cities. These events bring together current and aspiring female entrepreneurs once a month to connect with mentors and one another to build community. We’re partnering to launch Founder Fridays in Detroit, New Orleans, Sao Paulo and Moscow over the next year.
To celebrate both our birthday and the spirit of entrepreneurship that’s helped get us where we are today, we are hosting our first annual Google for Entrepreneurs Week, which will bring together more than 3,000 entrepreneurs and Googlers around the world. We kicked off over the weekend with a
Startup Weekend
event hosted at the Google Ventures Startup Lab in Mountain View, Calif., where Bay Area entrepreneurs came together to create their own startups in 54 hours. Over the course of the next week, Googlers in 28 cities across 13 countries will be hosting an event in their communities to bring their passion and expertise to local entrepreneurs. We’re teaming with a number of partners to make this happen, including the
Idea Village
in New Orleans,
Communitech
in Waterloo,
Tetuan Valley
in Wroclaw, the
Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship
in Johannesburg and the
Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce in Iowa
.
For more on these existing programs and to stay connected on upcoming events, visit google.com/entrepreneurs and
follow us on G+
.
Let’s Stand on a Platform for Good
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Posted by Anne Toth, Head of Google+ Privacy
At Google, we believe in the incredible potential for harnessing technology and the compassion of the human spirit to do good, to learn, and to help each other grow. We have seen inspiring examples of this with the extraordinary projects from the
Google Science Fair
and on YouTube with the
It Gets Better Project
.
In step with our commitment to expand and promote digital citizenship, Google is a proud sponsor of a new initiative --
A Platform for Good
.
A Platform for Good, a Family Online Safety Institute (
FOSI
) initiative, is an interactive online portal that empowers parents, teachers, teens and kids to connect and share knowledge about being responsible digital citizens.
With the support of companies, organizations and experts within the tech industry, A Platform for Good (PfG) will focus on the positive power of the Internet, using fun and engaging interactive elements to support online safety learning. One of the many exciting elements of PfG is the
Teach Teachers Tech
video series, led by
Adora Svitak
and sponsored by Google. Adora, 14, starts the series off with what inspires students about technology and ends with a challenge to students and teachers to submit their own stories.
A Platform for Good will reach students, parents and teachers in a new way, while addressing the need for a comprehensive approach to digital citizenship. See you at
aplatformforgood.com
!
Kent Walker at TPI Aspen Summit: Embrace Magic
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director of Public Policy
This week is the annual
Technology Policy Institute Aspen Summit
and our general counsel Kent Walker just gave a keynote talk on the ingredients of creating magical new products -- and how policymakers and regulators can ensure that patent and competition policy enable future magical inventions. Check out the prepared text of Kent's speech by clicking
here
.
Google for Entrepreneurs goes to San Diego to empower veterans and military families
Friday, August 17, 2012
Posted Bridgette Sexton, Global Entrepreneurship Manager
In addition to all they do for their country overseas, service members are also a markedly entrepreneurial group: although veterans represent only 6% of the U.S. population, they account for an impressive 13.5% of all U.S. small business owners. This entrepreneurial spirit is contributing to business growth around the country, and last week we decided to head down to San Diego to see how Google for Entrepreneurs and
Startup Weekend
could help.
On August 9, Google for Entrepreneurs, along with the
Syracuse University Institute for Veterans and Military Families
and Startup Weekend, hosted a series of events focused on giving business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs from the military community the training and tools they need to take advantage of the web to build and grow businesses. More than 200 service members learned about free tools to
create a web site
, track and measure their web presence and market their product or service.
Engaged and full of pride, the veteran-owned businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs came from across California. Misty Birchall, a Navy veteran and founder of
PubCakes
, delighted attendees when she gave us a taste of her passion for combining baking and craft beer. Marine Corps sergeant turned organic farmer Colin Archipley brought many participants from
Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training
, an entrepreneurial incubator program he founded to help transitioning veterans train for careers in sustainable agriculture. Even the underdogs (and undercats) were well-represented—
Precious Paw Prints
, an online retailer selling creative pet accessories owned by Marine veteran Kiersten Carlin, shared that small business can win by providing a higher level of quality and service that larger brands cannot.
Over the following weekend, aspiring entrepreneurs from the veterans community attended the local Startup Weekend, where they formed teams to turn their idea ideas into products. By Sunday night, five teams had launched businesses.
Being a successful entrepreneur means having an appetite for risk, an ability to navigate ambiguity and a passion to get things done at all costs; it’s no mystery why such a large number of small businesses are started by veterans or service-disabled veterans. They certainly have what it takes to be entrepreneurs.
You can read more about our recent programs for members of the veterans’ community
here
.
Improving Google Patents with European Patent Office patents and the Prior Art Finder
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Posted by Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager
Cross-posted from the
Google Research blog
At Google, we're constantly trying to make important collections of information more useful to the world. Since 2006, we’ve let people discover, search, and read United States patents online. Starting this week, you can do the same for the millions of ideas that have been submitted to the European Patent Office, such as
this one
.
Typically, patents are granted only if an invention is new and not obvious. To explain why an invention is new, inventors will usually cite prior art such as earlier patent applications or journal articles. Determining the novelty of a patent can be difficult, requiring a laborious search through many sources, and so we’ve built a Prior Art Finder to make this process easier. With a single click, it searches multiple sources for related content that existed at the time the patent was filed.
Patent pages now feature a “Find prior art” button that instantly pulls together information relevant to the patent application.
The Prior Art Finder identifies key phrases from the text of the patent, combines them into a search query, and displays relevant results from Google Patents, Google Scholar, Google Books, and the rest of the web. You’ll start to see the blue “Find prior art” button on individual patent pages starting today.
Our hope is that this tool will give patent searchers another way to discover information relevant to a patent application, supplementing the search techniques they use today. We’ll be refining and extending the Prior Art Finder as we develop a better understanding of how to analyze patent claims and how to integrate the results into the workflow of patent searchers.
These are small steps toward making this collection of important but complex documents better understood. Sometimes language can be a barrier to understanding, which is why earlier this year we
released an update to Google Translate
that incorporates the European Patent Office’s parallel patent texts, allowing the EPO to provide translation between English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Swedish, with more languages scheduled for the future. And with the help of the United States Patent & Trademark Office, we’ve continued to add to
our repository of USPTO bulk data
, making it easier for researchers and law firms to analyze the entire corpus of US patents. More to come!
Google Applauds Bipartisan Resolution Opposing Increased International Regulation of the Internet
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an important
House Concurrent Resolution
aimed at ensuring the Internet remains an open, stable, and global platform for economic growth, innovation, and cultural and civic discourse. As I have recently
testified
and
written
, a battle in the war for the Internet is opening at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations organization. This December, the ITU is conducting a review of the international agreements governing telecommunications, and some member countries see the ITU conference as an opportunity to expand the ITU’s regulatory authority to reach the Internet.
Traditionally, international discussions of Internet policy have flourished in a “multistakeholder”
system
that involves the input of lawmakers, academics, civil society, and users. If certain member states are successful in Dubai, they could change the Internet governance process as we know it, increasing state control over networks and substantially limiting the role of users and other vital, nongovernmental actors in important Internet policy debates.
By passing this resolution, the U.S. Government has recognized the Internet’s critical role in growing the global economy, its unique status as a platform for innovation, and the success of multistakeholder model that lies at the heart of its governance. In the lead-up to the December conference, the future of the Internet is at stake, and I hope that other countries will adopt publicly similar positions.
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