A couple of days ago Google released its latest “Transparency Report,” part of the company’s ongoing commitment to disclose requests by individuals, corporations, and governments to change what users see in search results and other Google properties such as YouTube.
The press coverage of Google’s report was copious – far more than the prior two years, and for good reason. This week’s disclosure included Google’s bi-annual report of government takedown requests (corporate and individual requests are updated in near real time). The news was not comforting.
As the Atlantic wrote:
The stories Google tells to accompany the broad-brush numbers (found in the “annotations” section and its blog) paint a picture to accompany those numbers that Google calls “alarming” — noting, in particular, that some of the requests for removal of political speech come from “Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.”
The number of takedown requests from governments is on the rise – up about 100% year to year for the US alone. Part of this, perhaps, can be explained by what might be called a “catchup effect” – governments are coming to terms with the pervasive power of digital information, and finally getting their heads around trying to control it, much as governments have attempted to control more analog forms of information like newspapers, television stations, and books.
But as we know, digital information is very, very different. It’s one thing to try to control the press, it’s quite another to do the same with the blog postings, YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, and emails of an entire citizenry. Given the explosion of arguably illegal or simply embarrassing information available to Google’s crawlers (cough, cough, Wikileaks), I’m rather surprised that worldwide government takedown requests haven’t grown at an exponential rate.
But to me, the rise of government takedown requests isn’t nearly as interesting as the role Google and other companies play in all of this. As I’ve written elsewhere, it seems that as we move our public selves into the digital sphere, we seem to be also moving our trust from the institutions of government to the institution of the corporation. For example, our offline identity is established by a government ID like a driver’s license. Online, many of us view Facebook as our identity service. Prior to email, our private correspondance was secured by a government institution called the postal service. Today, we trust AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, or Gmail with our private utterances. When documents were analog, they were protected by government laws against unreasonable search and seizure. When they live in the cloud….the ground is shifting. I could go on, but I think you get my point.
As we move ourselves into the realm of digital information, a realm mediated by private corporations, those corporations naturally become the focus of government attention. I find Google’s Transparency Report to be a refreshing response to this government embrace – but it’s an exercise that almost no other corporation completes (Twitter has a record of disclosing, but on a case by case basis). Where is Amazon’s Transparency Report? Yahoo’s? Microsoft’s? And of course, the biggest question in terms of scale and personal information – where is Facebook’s? Oh, and of course, where is Apple’s?
Put another way: If we are shifting our trust from the government to the corporation, who’s watching the corporations? With government, we’ve at least got clear legal recourse – in the United States, we’ve got the Constitution, the Freedom of Information Act, and a deep legal history protecting the role of the press – what Jefferson called the Fourth Estate. With corporations, we’re on far less comforting ground – most of us have agreed to Terms of Services we’ve never read, much less studied in sixth grade civics class.
As the Atlantic concludes:
Google is trying to make these decisions responsibly, and the outcome, as detailed in the report, is reason to have confidence in Google as an arbiter of these things if, as is the case, Google is going to be the arbiter of these issues. But unlike a US Court, we don’t see the transcripts of oral arguments, or the detailed reasoning of a judge. …The Transparency Report sheds more light on the governments Google deals with than with its own internal processes for making judgments about compliance….Google’s Transparency Report is the work of a company that is grappling with its power and trying to show its work.
I applaud Google’s efforts here, but I’m wary of placing such an important public trust in the hands of private corporations alone. Google is a powerful company, with access to a wide swath of the world’s information. But with the rise of walled gardens like iOS and Facebook, an increasing amount of our information doesn’t touch Google’s servers. We literally are in the dark about how this data is being accessed by governments around the world.
Google is setting an example I hope all corporations with access to our data will follow. So far, however, most companies don’t. And that should give all of us pause, and it should be the basis of an ongoing conversation about the role of government in our digital lives.
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As Felipe Calderón’s term as Mexico’s president draws to a close, Mexicans continue to strongly back his policy of deploying the military to combat the country’s powerful drug cartels. Eight-in-ten say this is the right course, a level of support that has remained remarkably constant since the Pew Global Attitudes Project first asked the question in 2009.
At the same time, the public is uneasy about the moral cost of the drug war: 74% say human rights violations by the military and police are a very big problem. But concern about rights abuses coexist with continued worries about drug-related violence and crime – both of which strong majorities describe as pressing issues in Mexico.
Whether Peña Nieto or any of the other presidential candidates have a solution to Mexico’s drug problems is an open question for the Mexican public. When asked which political party could do a better job of dealing with organized crime and drug traffickers, about equal numbers name Calderón’s National Action Party (PAN) (28%) and Peña Nieto’s PRI (25%), while only 13% point to the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Fully 23% volunteer that none of the parties is particularly capable of dealing with this critical issue.
More than five years after President Calderón first ordered troops to take part in controlling drug-related violence, the public remains firmly behind the use of military units to combat drug cartels. Fully eight-in-ten say they support the use of the Mexican army in the drug war, little changed from opinion over the past several years.
Perhaps not surprisingly, backers of the ruling PAN are more enthusiastic about the government’s campaign against drug traffickers: 62% of them believe the authorities are making progress, compared with just 45% of PRI and 34% of PRD supporters.
In order to combat the drug cartels, three-quarters of Mexicans would support the U.S. training Mexican police and military personnel. About six-in-ten (61%) would also approve of the U.S. providing money and weapons to the country’s police and military. However, there is much less enthusiasm for deploying U.S. troops within Mexico’s borders. Only a third would welcome such a move, while a 59% majority would oppose it.
Support for U.S. assistance in the drug war tends to be higher among those who see the government succeeding, rather than failing, in its fight against the cartels. For example, 85% of Mexicans who see progress in the drug war back U.S. training of police and military personnel, compared with 68% among those who think the government is losing ground or stymied. Similarly, those who see success in the drug war are more like than those who do not to approve of the U.S. providing money and weapons (71% vs. 54%). Even on the issue of deploying U.S. troops, Mexicans who see progress against the cartels are much more supportive of such a measure than those who believe the government is not succeeding in the drug war (47% vs. 22%).
Mexicans remain unhappy with their country’s direction, although the national mood has improved somewhat over the past year. Currently, 63% say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in Mexico – an improvement from 2011, when 76% were dissatisfied.
Issues related to the ongoing drug war top the Mexican public’s list of concerns. Three-in-four say cartel-related violence is a very big problem for the country, while a roughly equal number say the same about human rights violations by the military and police. And 73% name crime as a very big problem.
Felipe Calderón remains popular as he concludes his final months as president, with majorities expressing a favorable view of him personally and describing his influence on the country as positive. Ratings for the national government are also high, with roughly two-thirds (65%) saying it is having a good influence on the country’s direction.
In addition to the national government, the military is also seen in a favorable light, with nearly three-in-four (73%) saying it is having a good influence on the way things are going in the country. This represents a rebound from 2011, when 62% said the military was having a positive impact.
Of the three major presidential candidates, Mexicans are most positive about the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto. A 56%-majority has a favorable opinion of Peña Nieto, compared with 38% who see him unfavorably. The PAN’s Josefina Vazquez Mota and the PRD’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador are less popular, with only about a third expressing a favorable view of either candidate (36% and 34%, respectively). More than half express unfavorable views of López Obrador (60%) and Vazquez Mota (54%).
The public is divided when asked which party could do a better job handling some of the most pressing issues facing Mexico. On unemployment, organized crime/drug traffickers, and corruption, the three main parties come out looking pretty much the same in the eyes of most Mexicans. And confidence is generally low across the board: 30% or fewer think any of the parties is better than the others on these issues.
A 56%-majority of Mexicans say they have a positive opinion of the U.S., while just 34% rate their northern neighbor unfavorably. America’s image has improved since the passage in 2010 of the highly publicized Arizona immigration law, but has yet to return to levels seen before the law’s enactment.
More than half the public (53%) believe that Mexicans who move to the U.S. have a better life there. Just 14% say they have a worse life, while 28% believe life in the U.S. is neither better nor worse. Attitudes on this topic have shifted since last year, when there was a dip in the percentage who said life is better in the U.S.
Even though many believe life is better for those who emigrate to the U.S., most Mexicans (61%) say they would not move to the U.S., even if they had the means and opportunity to do so. Among the substantial minority who would move, half say they would emigrate without authorization (19% of the total population). These attitudes are unchanged since last year.
