Who's trying to control the web?

Google have just released this nice little tool showing us which country's governments have made requests for Google to release user data, and who has made requests to have information removed from the web.

"Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography. We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship."

googleblog

A taste of what is to come

The Americans got a little taste of what is to come in the near future when due to a DNS error they ended up behind China's "Great Firewall". This meant websites with inappropriate content were blocked.

Personally I don't understand what the fuzz is all about. I mean, they better get used to it as both the US and the EU are planning to incorporate similar Internet filtering, where the governments will be able to decide what information their citizens should be allowed to part-take in, and what should be considered "inappropriate" and blocked.

If all goes according to plan, the EU will join the likes of Iran, North Korea, Australia and China by 2012, with the US probably not far behind. Congratulations, you miserable enemies of freedom.