Last but not least: Google urged to censor
Last year, the number of requests from governments asking Google to remove critical comments continued to rise. As in previous years, most of these requests targeted political comments.
The number of such requests also increased significantly in Western democracies between the beginning of July and the end of December 2011. According to SDA, the US internet company writes this in its semi-annual transparency report. An increase in such requests is not only alarming because freedom of expression is under threat, said Google expert Dorothy Chou at the presentation of the report, "but also because some of these requests come from Western democracies that are not typically suspected of censorship".
Following the report, the number of requests from the USA to delete politically offensive material from Google and its video portal YouTube doubled. However, countries such as China are not included in the report. There, unpopular entries on the internet are blocked by hand.
The majority of requests to delete politically offensive material were comments, cartoons and videos that were considered defamatory, insulting or derogatory towards monarchs, politicians and institutions such as the army.
Should these censorship requests therefore be justified, as they are increasingly coming from democratic countries that otherwise do not tend to apply censorship? Or have monarchs, politicians and institutions such as the army simply increasingly swapped their "mirror on the wall" for the internet?
