Blogless

via the Independent

Google, famous for flying the corporate “do no evil” flag, is accused of — and this is putting it mildly — a lackluster commitment to practicing what they preach. Threat Level asserts that their regular claims to championing freedom of information (as evinced on Google’s public policy blog among other places) are inconsistent with the “real facts”.

Threat Level recently asked Google some questions about how much user data it turns over to the government, which, apparently, Google “declined to [answer] adequately.” The putatively inadequate answer, provided by Google spokesman Brian Richardson, runs as follows.

We don’t talk about types or numbers of requests to help protect all our users. Obviously, we follow the law like any other company. When we receive a subpoena or court order, we check to see if it meets both the letter and the spirit of the law before complying. And if it doesn’t we can object or ask that the request is narrowed. We have a track record of advocating on behalf of our users.

It seems reasonable to be worried about any inconsistencies in Google’s transparency policy, a fact which is strongly reinforced given the suspicion that Google receives tens of thousands of law enforcement and other requests each year for data, and, of course, actively recruits us to its operating system, browser, DNS servers, search service, e-mail service and phonecalling programs. That’s an enormous amount of data with which we’re entrusting them.

Threat Level seems correct in noting that this information is “at the heart of free expression” and that Google has an excellent chance here to “walk its talk, and set a standard…for the rest of the internet to follow.”