Twice each year, we publish a
Transparency Report describing the number of government data requests we received and how we responded to them. Today, we’re updating and expanding our report. The update details the government data requests we received in the first half of 2015. We’re expanding the report to cover government requests to block content. Governments occasionally ask us to remove or block content based on local laws. We’re committed to promoting free expression and want you to know how often this happens. In our Transparency Report, we now report the number of content block requests we receive, which countries send them, whether we blocked the content, and whether we provided notice to our users. We hope this information provides more insight into how we handle these requests. From January to June of 2015, we received 423 requests for user information from governments around the globe, and 0–249 national security requests from the US government. Although we continue to see an increase in requests from US law enforcement, the numbers remain small compared to our over 400 million users. Notably, the number of requests we received from non-US governments declined over this period. We continue to scrutinize carefully all the requests we receive to make sure they satisfy legal requirements and align with our
Government Data Request Principles, which outline our commitment to protecting user privacy. For more details, please read our
Transparency Report.
