Slash Gear released an article today about Government data requests to Google. This is an interesting piece especially on the discussion of privacy. You sign a privacy agreement with online companies such as Google, but apparently it takes one government order to disregard those details.
The news starts by explaining that the data requests made by government entities has increased since last year. The governing authorities are able to collect information by the ironically named Electronic Communications Privacy Act (EPCA). The article shows charts of how it has increased over the years. One other interesting piece is that Google did not make reporting data on compliance prior to 7/1/11. I feel that it is unfortunate that any data the government requests they are able to receive, but when we want to request data from the government, it’s can be a very difficult inquiry.