World governments, especially the United States', have become increasingly reliable on Google as a means of data collection, CNET reported. Though 90 percent of the 10,000 requests filed by the U.S. in the first half of 2013 related to straightforward, law enforcement procedures, an undisclosed amount (significant enough to draw criticism from Google's blog, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Electronics Communications Privacy Act) not accounted for in the 10,000 were for issues Google isn't allowed to release under the Foreign Surveillance Act, according to CNET.
"Requests for information have increased," the blog reads in its defining, middle paragraph. "We want to go even further. We believe it's your right to know what kinds of requests and how many each government is making of us and other companies. However, the U.S. Department of Justice contends that U.S. law does not allow us to share information about some national security requests that we might receive. Specifically, the U.S. government argues that we cannot share information about the requests we receive (if any) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But you deserve to know."
Google began publishing "transparency reports" tracking government inquiries into the search engine's great bastion of information since 2010, according to its blog post. Since then, requests have gone up 100 percent. To account for this half year's dramatic spike, Google has updated its report eight times already, according to CNET.
Google remains passionate about disclosing as much information to the public as possible. At the end of its blog post, it mentions a case it brought against the federal government earlier this year intended to reduce some of the secrecy surrounding the Foreign Surveillance Act.
"Our promise to you is to continue to make this report robust, to defend your information from overly broad government requests, and to push for greater transparency around the world," the post concluded.
According to the blog's charts, one of which is titled Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Requests with the results blacked out by a permanent marker, the U.S. is by far the leader in total requests, accounting for 42 percent of the entire world's output (as further calculated by CNET), and has been since 2010.
The charts: