Google has become less likely to comply with government demands for its users’ online communications and other activities as authorities in the U.S. and other countries become more aggressive about mining the Internet for personal data.
The latest snapshot of the intensifying focus on Google as a government surveillance tool emerged Thursday in a report that the company has released every six months for the past three years.
The breakdown shows Google Inc. received 25,879 legal requests for people’s data from governments during the first half of this year. That represented a 21% increase from the last half of last year.
U.S. authorities accounted for 10,918 of the requests, more than anywhere else.
The report says Google is rejecting a higher percentage of the requests.
