The Google Empire's handy little transparency feature has been the subject of this blog before. The transparency report is making headlines yet again because it reveals disturbing trends across the globe. Yes, internet censorship may be even more popular with governments than secret prisons are at the moment. For no apparent reason, the United States government's requests for user data increased by 20% over the last six months for a total of 4,287. And that's just the fraction of requests Google's actually telling us about. The true figure is probably at least 10 times that amount. And let's not both discussing notoriously censor happy regimes like those of Iran and China. The federal government also demanded that Google remove 128 items from their various platforms, such as Blogger, AdWords, and Youtube. Google complied with these orders approximately 83% of the time; at least, that's what they're willing to admit. They've also added a traffic monitor that's supposed to show you when governments have chosen to block certain content altogether, but I really can't make heads or tails of their graph. The graph seems to indicate that the U.S. government hasn't blocked much of anything, and perhaps that's the truth. I just find it hard to believe. Then again, blocking stuff doesn't sound like the Obama administration's style. It's too, shall we say, overt. Americans would undoubtedly notice a ten day Youtube blackout, for example. Such a thing would trigger public outcry under any circumstances. A purportedly democratic regime could do irreparable damage to its reputation for despotic demonstrating that kind of despotic behavior. Our government prefers to do its dirty business below the radar, which is probably why it's concentrating on spying on individuals instead. But the federal government isn't entirely innocent when it comes to so-called blackouts. On September 28th and 29th of 2009, they sealed off Google spreadsheets. We'll obviously never know why they decided to cut people off from creating or viewing Excel style documents for two days. I can only assume that Al Qaeda started tracking their budget online. It's worth nothing that Google isn't the only company who keeps track of this stuff. The Open Net Initiative does so as well, although they don't seem to know a whole lot. They have no data concerning political suppression, filtration of internet tools, or conflict/security matters when it comes to the United States and Canada. Perhaps that's because the project is based out of Canadian and U.S. universities. They don't have a "country profile" on either of these nations most likely due to a lack of information. The only tidbits they have concerning the U.S. and Canada relates to inhibiting content relating to social ills, including sexuality, gambling, drugs, etc. Both countries are said to be "selective" about their efforts, though the site doesn't readily define what that means. Canadian laws are far more P.C. than those of the U.S., so it seems odd that they'd fall close together with respect to this category. Don't expect these trends to reverse any time soon. Or ever. Your best bet is to assume that someone's watching you online at all times and that the government feels free to exert total control over the interwebs at the drop of a hat. And let's not forget that Google will happily assist them in these ventures at least 83% of the time.