Search engines and ISPs have for years refused to tell the public how many times the cops and feds have forced them to turn over information on users.

Google broke that unwritten code of silence Tuesday, unveiling a Government Requests Tool that shows the public how often individual governments around the world have asked for user information, and how often they've asked Google to remove content from their sites or search index, for reasons other than copyright violation.

The answer for U.S. users is 3,580 total requests for information over a six-month period from July 2009 to December 2009. That number comes to about 20 a day, and includes subpoenas and search warrants from state, local and federal law enforcement officials. Brazil just edges out the U.S. in the number of requests for data about users, with 3,663 over those six months. That's due to the continuing Brazilian popularity of Google's social networking site, Orkut.

Google VP David Drummond announced the tool in a blog post Tuesday, casting it as a tool to cut down on censorship – not surprising, given that Google says it's been censored by 25 of the 100 countries it operates in.

[G]overnment censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content. So it's no surprise that Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services. Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography. We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship.

Google is also releasing information about the number of times governments ask the company to take down content or remove links. These include requests to take down defamatory videos, such as the one that led to prosecution of Google executives in Italy. The statistics do not include requests based on copyright or from reports of child pornography, since Google automatically takes down the latter whenever it detects it.

Google has long pledged its allegiance to transparency and says this announcement will add to the long-running debate about how much power law enforcement and governments should have to see what citizens do online.

A broad consortium of tech companies and privacy groups recently announced a push to modernize the nation's privacy laws so that data stored by third parties, especially by so-called cloud computing services like Gmail, are treated just like data stored on citizens' home computers. Currently, e-mails stored online lose much of their legal protection after 6 months, and the Justice Department recently tried to get at unopened mail online without having to get a proper search warrant.

The numbers reflect only criminal investigations, and do not include national security investigation powers such as National Security Lettters or FISA warrants, which companies are often not legally allowed to disclose.

The numbers also do not include the number of people named in the requests, whether Google fought the request, or which products the requests apply to. The company says it plans to release that information after it figures out how to create meaningful statistics, since a single request can apply to multiple people using multiple products, or conversely, Google can receive multiple requests concerning the same person.

Threat Level has been agitating since 2006 for Google to disclose records requests. While there's more the company could reveal, today's move is an unprecedented step from an internet giant.

For its part Microsoft says it's not ready to reveal its numbers.

"At this time Microsoft is not commenting on the demands made by governments for customer information," the company said in an e-mailed statement "However, we are in the process of working towards full implementation of the Global Network Initiative principles, which will enable a framework for providing more transparency to our processes and procedures in responding to governments demands for customer information."

Fellow internet giant Yahoo says it's also a founding member of the Global Network alliance, but it doesn't give out surveillance statistics, in part to protect user privacy.

"In support of both user privacy and public safety interests, we do not generally discuss the details of law enforcement demands," the company said in an e-mailed statement. "As a general matter, Yahoo! Inc. and its subsidiaries around the world receive law enforcement demands relating to only a tiny fraction (less than one one-hundredth of 1%) of the Yahoo! user base."

That initiative was started after Congress contemplated regulating how large U.S. internet companies do business in countries with repressive governments, after Yahoo helped the Chinese government imprison political activists by turning over their e-mails to authorities.

The ACLU applauded Google's move, saying they'd called for this data for years and that they hope it helps the movement to reform the U.S.'s data privacy laws.

"Americans for too long have been kept in the dark about how their private information is stored, used and shared," said Laura Murphy, who heads the ACLU's Washington Legislative office. "It is our hope that this tool will help Americans to better understand the relationship between private companies and our government."

Murphy says such reporting should be mandatory.

"Congress should make updating the law a priority so that other companies will fall in line with Google and allow for greater transparency when it comes to the government’s requests for our information," Murphy said.

ISPs and large tech companies have long used the excuse that they don't publish this information because no one else does. Now that Google has taken this first step, that argument no longer works. And we are looking at you, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon and AT&T, when we say that.

You might notice that Google reports no data for China and other countries for user requests in criminal investigations. That's because Google is not reporting data for criminal requests when countries have fewer than 30 in six months, since those "statistics could place important investigations at risk and interfere with public safety efforts of the authorities."

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