In its latest transparency report published on Wednesday, Google showed the number of request for users' information the hi-tech company has received during the first half of this year. This number jumped to a total record of 44,943 with the U.S. in the first place of requesters, with Germany and France being the second and third.
According to Digital Trends, these numbers represent an increase of 10 percent compared to the first half of 2015 for 76,713 Google accounts, down from 81,311 accounts, Also, it was revealed that many nations requested users' data for the first time, including El Salvador, Belarus, Fiji, the Cayman Islands, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.
The US Requested More Information
Probably the most incredible detail is that from the whole number of request, the U.S. represents the 79%, which is a situation that put the American spy agencies once again in the spotlight because of the privacy issue after the Yahoo´s Email scandal, in which several users were being hacked without knowing it.
Although this event made some people lose faith on major hi-tech companies, it is well known that Google has always fought against the violation of users privacy, being the main reason why it has its own firm policies regarding to this issue, which allows the company to not provide information related to criminal cases without a search warrant.
Google Support The US Surveillance Practices Reform
However, far from avoiding cooperate with these nations; Google actually helped them in an average of 64 percent of users data request without giving any details of which accounts and information were requested, as reported by TechCrunch. In fact, the company showed its support to the U.S. surveillance practices reform, which would allow it to spy any person around the world.
"In recent years, the United States has implemented or enacted meaningful surveillance reforms. And the U.S. Congress is beginning the process of assessing potential reforms to Section 702 of FISA, which authorizes surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States. We look forward to working together with others in our industry on continuing surveillance reform in the U.S. and around the world," Google´s director of law enforcement and information security Richard Salgado told in a blog post.
