Google has released its latest transparency report in which it details the extent to which public bodies have requested the removal of content and the amount of requests it has received for access to its users' private information.
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In the six months from January 2012, governments around the world made 20,938 requests for access to data from Google, showing a sharp increase in overall government demands for data; Google's first report showed only 12,539 requests (as shown in graph below).
The US government made the most demands, requesting details from Google 7,969 times, followed by India (2,319), Brazil (1,566) and France (1,546).
Google received 1,425 requests from the UK government for access to the search engine's users' private data. The tech giant complied, at least partially, with 64 per cent of the data requests.
The number of requests in the UK had decreased from 1,455 in the six months from July 2011, of which 64 per cent of the information requests were at least partly complied with.
In comparison to the UK, Google complied with a larger proportion of requests in the first six months of 2012 from other countries such as the US (90 per cent), Japan (86 per cent) and Denmark (78 per cent).
However, Google complied with fewer of the overall requests from France (44 per cent), Germany (39 per cent), and the majority of other countries.
As part of the report, Google also disclosed removal requests from government agencies and courts. In the UK, Google had two requests from law enforcement agencies to remove content online, both of which were refused.
"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove 14 search results for linking to sites that criticise the police and claim individuals were involved in obscuring crimes. In addition, we received a request from another local law enforcement agency to remove a YouTube video for criticising the agency of racism. We did not remove content in response to these requests," the report said.
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Google said that the total number of content removal requests it received in the UK increased by 98 per cent in comparison to the previous reporting period.
In a blog post, senior policy analyst at Google, Dorothy Chou, said Google's six transparency reports showed a clear trend, that "government surveillance is on the rise".
She went on to say that the information that the tech giant discloses is only an "isolated sliver" showing how governments interact with the internet, as other technology and telecommunications companies do not disclose all of the requests they get.
"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," she said.
Last week, at a Westminster e-Forum, Facebook's director of public policy for UK and Ireland, Simon Milner, said the social media website is considering revealing the number of data access requests it gets from law enforcement agencies.
