Hammad Khalid
According to the Hong Kong Free Press, Google supplied certain user data to the Hong Kong government last year despite agreeing not to execute such data requests from authorities.
In response to three of the 43 requests it got from Hong Kong’s government, the business said it “provided some data.” Two of the requests were human trafficking investigations and contained search warrants, while the third was an emergency disclosure in the case of a genuine threat to someone’s life.
Last August, Google announced that it would no longer answer to Hong Kong government data requests unless they were conducted in collaboration with the US Department of Justice. The move was in response to China’s imposition of a new national security law in Hong Kong, which contained the possibility of a life sentence for anybody found guilty of subversion.
Source: The Verge
On the Chinese mainland, political protestors and dissidents have been detained on subversion allegations. In response to the security regulation, Facebook and Twitter paused the processing of data requests from Hong Kong’s government.
Google’s general policy on responding government request states that other metadata such as subscriber information including their name, associated email and phone numbers, IP addresses, payment information, timestamps and email headers may be provided in response to government demands.
Sharing user’s data with other organizations without asking the users is definitely unethical which deserves some sort of apology or valid reasoning but on the contrary, the company responded that “it would stop responding to such requests”, which is kind of rude from the tech giant.
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