Magic moments in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, thanks to the web

Today more than 50 million Egyptians started heading to the polls to cast their votes for an independent Parliament, many for the first time in their lives. The revolution in Egypt, which captured the attention of the world beginning in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, made this possible by opening the floodgates of political participation.

With the free flow of information online, people can connect and engage in a open dialogue about the future of Egypt. The web is enabling many new voters to become better informed on their choice of candidates, and letting politicians reach electors in new and exciting ways.

Getting information about the new rules and the new players is no small feat for Egyptians: there are nearly 11,000 candidates vying for 498 seats across 27 governorates nationwide during a multi-stage election that started today and lasts until March 2012. We’re doing our best to organize information to make it easier for voters to find everything they need in one place. For example, millions of Egyptians have learned where they can vote through our landing page, www.google.com.eg/elections.

We’ve also worked to give a voice to thousands of candidates to reach voters through interactive video. The YouTube Townhall includes nearly 400 videos posted by candidates and political parties explaining where they stand on issues from education and the economy to health care and political reform, sparking vibrant conversations in cafés from Alexandria to Aswan.

We’re helping voters and politicians connect not just in Egypt, but throughout the entire Middle East and the world. For Tunisia’s recent parliamentary elections, we partnered with startup news portal Tunisia Live to offer a training workshop in Tunis on Google tools and social media for politicians. In France, we set up a special YouTube site for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The Internet is playing an increasingly significant role in Egypt. It’s bolstering civic engagement and becoming a powerful mechanism for information sharing—crucial to helping the nation make the tough transition to democracy.

Posted by Samir ElBahaie, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs for Google Middle East North Africa

More data, more transparency around government requests

How do governments affect access to information on the Internet? To help shed some light on that very question, last year we launched an online, interactive Transparency Report. All too often, policy that affects how information flows on the Internet is created in the absence of empirical data. But by showing traffic patterns and disruptions to our services, and by sharing how many government requests for content removal and user data we receive from around the world, we hope to offer up some metrics to contribute to a public conversation about the laws that influence how people communicate online.

Today we’re updating the Government Requests tool with numbers for requests that we received from January to June 2011. For the first time, we’re not only disclosing the number of requests for user data, but we’re showing the number of users or accounts that are specified in those requests too. We also recently released the raw data behind the requests. Interested developers and researchers can now take this data and revisualize it in different ways, or mash it up with information from other organizations to test and draw up new hypotheses about government behaviors online.

We believe that providing this level of detail highlights the need to modernize laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which regulates government access to user information and was written 25 years ago—long before the average person had ever heard of email. Yet at the end of the day, the information that we’re disclosing offers only a limited snapshot. We hope others join us in the effort to provide more transparency, so we’ll be better able to see the bigger picture of how regulatory environments affect the entire web.

Posted by Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst

Tunisia Talks on YouTube

The Arab Spring started in Tunisia, and it’s appropriate that Tunisia is now leading the way to a full democracy with their landmark free elections scheduled to take place on October 23. To help in this process, we recently partnered with startup news portal Tunisia Live to offer a training workshop in Tunis on Google tools and social media for politicians.

The turnout was fantastic; members from more than 40 parties and independent coalitions attended. The same day, Tunisia Live launched the Tunisia Talks channel on YouTube, channeling the enthusiasm of politicians to leverage social media and engage with voters. In this project, Tunisians are encouraged to submit and vote for top questions to the candidates, and many did so—for a flavor, see this example or this one. So far, more than 400 questions have been submitted.



This outreach is all the more exciting because YouTube was blocked for so many years in Tunisia. But when the regime collapsed last January, the site was unbanned and quickly became popular. Many Tunisian media outlets have set up channels to organize their video libraries on YouTube.

In this weekend’s elections, Tunisians will choose a constitutional council to write a new constitution for the country. Voters will select from lists of party members and independents. The Tunisian electoral committee has set up an official site www.isie.tn and is actively using social media to encourage voter registration—check their channel YouTube.com/isietn.

This is an exciting time in Tunisia. The media landscape—once limited and government-controlled—is now opening up to online platforms. Tunisians finally have access to a free Internet—and it’s playing a key role in building an encompassing political environment.

Posted by Samir ElBahaie, Regional Policy and Government Affairs Manager, Middle East and Northern Africa

(Cross-posted on the European Public Policy Blog)

Changes to the open Internet in Kazakhstan

(Cross-posted on the European Public Policy Blog and Public Policy Blog)

Update June 14, 7:40pm: After we published this post, the Kazakhstan authorities issued new guidance stating that the order no longer applies to previously registered domains. In practice this means we can re-launch google.kz. While we’re pleased that we can once again offer our users in Kazakhstan customized search results, we encourage the Government of Kazakhstan to rescind this requirement for all future .kz domains as well.

The genius of the Internet has always been its open infrastructure, which allows anyone with a connection to communicate with anyone else on the network. It’s not limited by national boundaries, and it facilitates free expression, commerce and innovation in ways that we could never have imagined even 20 or 30 years ago.

Some governments, however, are attempting to create borders on the web without full consideration of the consequences their actions may have on their own citizens and the economy. Last month, the Kazakhstan Network Information Centre notified us of an order issued by the Ministry of Communications and Information in Kazakhstan that requires all .kz domain names, such as google.kz, to operate on physical servers within the borders of that country. This requirement means that Google would have to route all searches on google.kz to servers located inside Kazakhstan. (Currently, when users search on any of our domains, our systems automatically handle those requests the fastest way possible, regardless of national boundaries.)

We find ourselves in a difficult situation: creating borders on the web raises important questions for us not only about network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression. If we were to operate google.kz only via servers located inside Kazakhstan, we would be helping to create a fractured Internet. So we have decided to redirect users that visit google.kz to google.com in Kazakh. Unfortunately, this means that Kazakhstani users will experience a reduction in search quality as results will no longer be customized for Kazakhstan.

Measures that force Internet companies to choose between taking actions that harm the open web, or reducing the quality of their services, hurt users. We encourage governments and other stakeholders to work together to preserve an open Internet, which empowers local users, boosts local economies and encourages innovation around the globe.

Posted by Bill Coughran, SVP, Research & Systems Infrastructure

Inside the Big Tent

(Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog)

At our European Zeitgeist event, held annually near London, we traditionally erect a large marquee for a partner dinner and entertainment. This year we wondered if there was anything else we could do with the space once Zeitgeist was over. In that instant, the Big Tent was born.

Canvas aside, the term "big tent" has, of course, a political connotation. Wikipedia defines it as "seeking to attract people with diverse viewpoints...does not require adherence to some ideology as a criterion for membership." That just about sums up the idea behind last week’s Big Tent conference, which focused on debating some of the hot issues relating to the internet and society.

We invited the advocacy groups Privacy International and Index on Censorship—both of whom have criticised Google in the past—to partner with us in staging the debates, and sought diverse viewpoints among the speakers and the delegates.

Topics on the agenda included: what was the role of technology in the revolutions in the Middle East? What are the limits of free speech online? Do we need tougher privacy laws or are we in danger of stifling innovation? Can technology and access to information be used to help prevent conflict?

The result was a stimulating day of debate featuring the likes of Big Brother television producer Peter Bazalgette, Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts and the U.K. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt alongside Googlers including Eric Schmidt, Google Ideas’ Jared Cohen and the Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim, and a highly engaged and knowledgeable audience of NGOs, policy advisers, tech businesses and journalists.



You can watch highlights on YouTube and see event feedback on Twitter. We hope to bring the Big Tent to other regions over the coming year.

Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations, EMEA

Software downloads for Iran

During the protests that erupted in Iran following the disputed Presidential election in June 2009, the central government in Tehran deported all foreign journalists, shut down traditional media outlets, closed off print journalism and disrupted cell phone lines. The government also infiltrated networks, posing as activists and using false identities to round up dissidents. In spite of this, the sharing of information using the Internet prevailed. YouTube and Twitter were cited by journalists, activists and bloggers as the best source for firsthand accounts and on-the-scene footage of the protests and violence across the country. At the time, though, U.S. export controls and sanctions programs prohibited software downloads to Iran.

Some of those export restrictions have now been lifted and today, for the first time, we’re making Google Earth, Picasa and Chrome available for download in Iran. We’re committed to full compliance with U.S. export controls and sanctions programs and, as a condition of our export licenses from the Treasury Department, we will continue to block IP addresses associated with the Iranian government.

Our products are specifically designed to help people create, communicate, share opinions and find information. And we believe that more available products means more choice, more freedom, and ultimately more power for individuals in Iran and across the globe.

Update Feb 28, 2012: In addition to the products above, we also recently made Chrome extensions available for download in Iran.

Update Jan 16, 2013: In addition to the products above, we’re now making the Google Earth plug-in available for download in Iran. This plug-in enables people to navigate and explore geographic data on a 3D globe using a web browser.

Posted by Neil Martin, Export Compliance Programs Manager

Discussing free expression at Internet at Liberty 2010

It’s not often that we get to step out of our everyday jobs and spend extended time engaging in global conversations about one of our fundamental values at Google: ensuring access to information. For three days last week in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, we had that chance when more than 300 bloggers, activists, academics, government officials and representatives of non-profits and business convened for “Internet at Liberty 2010.” The conference, which we co-hosted with the Central European University, focused on “the promise and peril of online free expression” and the role of individuals, corporations and government in protecting free expression online.

The conference drew participants from 74 countries, including many from places where free expression is constantly under threat—such as Kazakhstan, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. It drew a large contingent of bloggers and activists from the Middle East and representatives from both the Iranian and Chinese diasporas. Our liveblog of the conference was followed by more than 3.3 million people around the world.

The issues at the heart of the gathering—and the challenges faced by free expression advocates the world over, were highlighted by our senior vice president, David Drummond, when in his opening remarks to the conference he quoted an email from an activist who could not obtain permission to attend “Internet at Liberty.” The activist wrote:

Everywhere I turned, I was only talking to a repetition of the same monomaniac mind where all the keywords around the conference were defined as dangerous and forbidden: ‘liberty,’ ‘access,’ ‘Internet,’ ‘Google,’ and even such simple words as ‘university,’ ‘conference’ and ‘Europe.’ Upon a second investigation, I realized that they are not afraid of these things because of their intrinsic identity, but because they can transform me from a passive and obedient member of the mass to a free, critical, creative and active citizen.

Also at the conference, we introduced Google Transparency Report, an interactive online site that allows users to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked. (Read more in our blog post.) Other sessions included a debate on the question, “Is the potential of the Internet as a force for positive political change being oversold?” and workshops offering practical education and tools for lobbying governments on key issues.

Visit our website for the conference, which we plan to turn into a discussion and action forum for those who attended the conference and—we hope—thousands more. Our aim is to bring together people who share the common goal of promoting free expression on the Internet. We want to build constituencies behind key initiatives including helping individuals protect themselves online; promoting corporate and government transparency; finding the right balance between privacy and free expression; and making sure that platforms like Google aren’t held liable for content they host.

We’re committed to reaching far beyond the results of the Budapest conference and the banks of the Danube to help ensure that online free expression, like the Internet itself, knows no borders.

Posted by Bob Boorstin, Director, Public Policy

Tools to visualize access to information

When Google’s services are blocked or filtered, we can’t serve our users effectively. That’s why we act every day to maximize free expression and access to information. To promote transparency around this flow of information, we’ve built an interactive online Transparency Report with tools that allow people to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked. We believe that this kind of transparency can be a deterrent to censorship.

Like all companies, Google’s services occasionally experience traffic disruptions. Our new traffic tracking tool helps us and others track whether these interruptions are related to mechanical outages or are government-induced. Each traffic graph shows historic traffic patterns for a given country and service. Graphs are updated as data is collected, then normalized and scaled in units of 0 to 100. This new tool—which is global and includes China—will replace the Mainland China service availability chart, which showed product access for China alone. By showing outages, the traffic graphs visualize disruptions in the free flow of information, whether it's a government blocking information or a cable being cut. For example, the graphs show that YouTube has been inaccessible in Iran since June 12, 2009, following the disputed presidential election.


In April we also created a website that shows the number of government inquiries for information about users and requests for Google to take down or censor content. Today we’re updating this interactive Government Requests map with data from the first six months of 2010. We’ve also updated our analysis of the trends we saw across the data over the past six months. The new data for 2010 now includes the number of individual items asked to be removed, per country (for example, there may be many URLs per a single request.) You can learn more about trends in the data here. We view this as a concrete step that, we hope, will encourage both companies and governments to be similarly transparent.

Free expression is one of our core values. We believe that more information means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual. Free expression is, of course, also at the heart of Google’s business. Our products are specifically designed to help people create, communicate, share opinions and find information across the globe. We hope this step toward greater transparency—and these tools—will help in ongoing discussions about the free flow of information.

Update Jan 11, 2011: The Transparency Report is now available in each of the 6 U.N. languages—Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), French, Russian, Spanish and English.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

How would you advance online free expression?

Cross-posted on the YouTube blog.

There seems to be no hotter topic for discussion among Internet watchers these days than concerns over online free expression -- from the role of bloggers in advancing democratic movements, to sophisticated government censorship, to debates over how best to balance transparency with national security concerns. YouTube, Google and the Central European University will make our own contribution to the conversation at a major international conference we’re hosting in Budapest from September 20-22. We've invited grassroots activists, bloggers and vloggers from five continents, as well as representatives from NGOs, academia, industry and government to begin a long-term discussion about these issues and to form international working groups to promote practical change.

But a conversation about online free expression would be nothing without contributions from you. From election protests to government whistleblowing to grassroots advocacy, we’ve seen YouTube users upload, watch and share stories that would’ve never received global attention before the Internet era. That's why we're inviting you to submit your own video that answers this question:

"What's the biggest barrier to free expression on the Internet, and what would you do to overcome it?"

You can go to our Moderator series here to submit ideas and videos and/or to vote on your favorite contributions from others around the world.

Please participate by September 7, and we’ll showcase many of your responses at the conference in Budapest later in the month. We’ll also offer highlights from the dialogue on CitizenTube.

Posted by Bob Boorstin, Public Policy, and Steve Grove, YouTube News and Politics

Standing up for the First Amendment with 1 for All

In the United States, our lives would be unrecognizable without the First Amendment. Every time you search, tweet, blog, pray (or not), gripe about your government, gather with your friends online or off, upload a video, read a newspaper or send an email to your member of Congress, you’re enjoying the rights it guarantees:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

We’re celebrating the First Amendment on the 1st of July by joining news organizations, artists, librarians, lawyers, educators and many others in supporting 1 for All, a national campaign to teach Americans about the source of these fundamental freedoms. From now through July 25, you can show your support for the First Amendment by submitting a 30-second video that demonstrates your freedom to speak, rock or assemble. The best videos will be featured on YouTube, on TV and at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

At a time when restrictions on speech are increasing around the globe, we think it’s essential to remind ourselves that we can’t take freedom of expression for granted. Get informed, get involved and stand up with us for the First on the 1st.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer