Google Exposes 31,280 User Accounts To The Government Every Year

Sites include Google.com . Published on October 30th, 2011. Written by Anthony West.

It’s no secret that Facebook regularly cooperates with the US government in releasing user data, but many will be surprised to hear that Google does the same thing too—perhaps even on a greater scale.
According to figures released by Google, the US government regularly request user accounts and Google complies often in excess of 31,280 account releases every year. This staggering number of user accounts turned over to the US government is the most requested by any country. Only India has fewer requests each year and even counting their presence, Google releases 5 times more user accounts to the US government than India’s.
Naturally, Google’s compliance with these request has annoyed privacy advocates, but Google duly counters that it is only fulfilling it’s legal obligations. Google may be right because under a piece of U.S. law regulating government access to online user information called The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), Google must comply with these request.
Many question the relevance of the ECPA in the contemporary context and cite the outmoded way in which the Act requests and handles data. To Google’s defence though, the tech giant has been vocal against the Act itself and recently joined forces with the like of IBM to combat it. For now users will have to accept that the Government can snoop round when it wants—even if the ECPA is constitutionally suspect.
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