Google refuses official requests to take down YouTube video of police brutality

Google refused the request of a U.S. law enforcement agency earlier this year to remove a YouTube video showing police brutality, it has been revealed.



The web giant did not give details about the contents of the video, not pictured, but said it turned down the petition for it to be taken down between January and June this year.

'We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove,' Google wrote in its Transparency Report.



Request: Google did not give details about the contents of the video, not pictured, but said it turned down the petition for it to be taken down

'Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials.



'We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.'



The report revealed that Google was bombarded with requests for information and for content to be removed by the U.S. government.

Officials asked for 757 items to me removed in the first half of 2011, with defamation being cited as the reason in 80 per cent of cases.



Some 63 per cent of the requests were accepted, but Google said it declined many requests as they were not backed up by a court order.



'Some requests may not [be] specific enough for us to know what the government wanted us to remove (for example, no URL is listed in the request), and others involve allegations of defamation through informal letters from government agencies rather than a court orders [sic],' it was written in the report.



'We generally rely on courts to decide if a statement is defamatory according to local law.'



Google, which was founded on the philosophy of 'Don't be evil', is thought to be seeking to show that it is a trustworthy site for users.



The U.S. government made the third largest number of requests for content to be removed behind Germany and Brazi.



But the government made more requests for user data than any other country in the world.

