A BBC News article today on the Google Transparency report reminded me of a piece I wrote back in 2010 on the same subject where the UK came out on top for countries spying on their citizens when population size was taken into account.

Today’s report shows however that the UK has slipped to second place behind Hong Kong clearly demonstrating that this government is not serious about terrorism and needs to do more – that last bit being clear sarcasm on my behalf but, unfortunately, just what you would get from some Liebore talking head on the BBC.

Before I bore you with tables though, there is this little snippet from the article where a private company has intervened on our behalf without resorting to legal nicities and asked google to remove some videos because the private company suggests they are related to terrorism :

Google has revealed it removed about 640 videos from YouTube that allegedly promoted terrorism over the second half of 2011 after complaints from the UK’s Association of Chief Police Officers.

The news was contained in its latest Transparency Report which discloses requests by international authorities to remove or hand over material.

The firm said it terminated five accounts linked to the suspect videos.

Yes indeed – our good friends at ACPO who go around making deals and gentlemen’s agreements using their pets instead of resorting to the legal system everyone else has to abide by.

Anyway, enough ACPO nonsense, here is the latest user account requests sent to google by country with the UK is a safe 4th place :

And here is the same data ranked by requests per million population with the UK now 2nd having been overtaken by tiny Hong Kong :

In case you are interested, here is how it looked in September 2010 :