Google Reports on Government Requests and Censorship

On Sept 21, Google is expected to introduce a new tool called the Transparency Report. It publishes where and when Internet traffic to Google sites is blocked, and the blockages are annotated with details when possible.

For instance, the tool shows that YouTube has been blocked in Iran since the disputed presidential election in June 2009. The Transparency Report will also be the home for Google's government requests tool, a map that shows every time a government has asked Google to take down or hand over information, and what percentage of the time Google has complied. Google introduced it in April and updates it every six months. Government requests could be court orders to remove hateful content or a subpoena to pass along information about a Google user. The data in the Transparency Report is not published in real-time and is raw -- for instance, it does not differentiate whether a site is inaccessible because a government blocked service or because a cable was cut.