Category Archives: Public Policy Blog

Google’s views on government, policy and politics

Sharing National Security Letters with the Public

In our continued effort to increase transparency around government demands for user data, today we begin to make available to the public the National Security Letters (NSLs) we have received where, either through litigation or legislation, we have been freed of nondisclosure obligations. We previewed this back in October when we updated our Transparency Report.

As we have described in the past, we have fought for the right to be transparent about our receipt of NSLs. This includes working with the government to publish statistics about NSLs we’ve received, successfully fighting NSL gag provisions in court, and leading the effort to ensure that Internet companies can be more transparent with users about the volume and scope of national security demands that we receive.   

In 2015, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which allowed companies like Google to make more granular disclosures  about National Security Letters they receive.  In addition, the Act restricts the use of indefinite gag restrictions that prevent providers from ever notifying customers or talking about the demands. The Department of Justice (DOJ) must now regularly review disclosure restrictions in NSLs and lift those that are no longer needed. The United States Attorney General approved procedures to do this, and as we mentioned recently, the FBI has started lifting gag restrictions on particular NSLs.

We are now making copies of those NSLs available.  Our goal in doing so is to shed more light on the nature and scope of NSLs. We minimized redactions to protect privacy interests, but the content of the NSLs remain as they were when served.  We are also publishing the correspondence reflecting the lifting of the nondisclosure restrictions. We have links to the documents below.  In the near future, we will establish a more permanent home for these and additional materials from our Transparency Report.  

Redacted NSLs and FBI correspondence

NSL-10-272979 (FBI notice)

NSL-13-375880 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-394627 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-395838 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-396103 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-396300 (FBI notice)

NSL-15-417535 (FBI notice)

NSL-15-418313 (FBI notice)

While we are encouraged by this development, we will remain vigilant in opposing legislation that would significantly expand the universe of information that can be obtained with an NSL.

Sharing National Security Letters with the public

*On August 10, 2017, we updated this post with additional National Security Letters (NSLs) we received where, either through litigation or legislation, we have been freed of nondisclosure obligations. We hope by continuing to disclose this content, we can shed more light on the nature and scope of these requests.

In our continued effort to increase transparency around government demands for user data, today we begin to make available to the public the National Security Letters (NSLs) we have received where, either through litigation or legislation, we have been freed of nondisclosure obligations. We previewed this back in October when we updated our Transparency Report.

As we have described in the past, we have fought for the right to be transparent about our receipt of NSLs. This includes working with the government to publish statistics about NSLs we’ve received, successfully fighting NSL gag provisions in court, and leading the effort to ensure that Internet companies can be more transparent with users about the volume and scope of national security demands that we receive.   

In 2015, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which allowed companies like Google to make more granular disclosures  about National Security Letters they receive.  In addition, the Act restricts the use of indefinite gag restrictions that prevent providers from ever notifying customers or talking about the demands. The Department of Justice (DOJ) must now regularly review disclosure restrictions in NSLs and lift those that are no longer needed. The United States Attorney General approved procedures to do this, and as we mentioned recently, the FBI has started lifting gag restrictions on particular NSLs.

We are now making copies of those NSLs available.  Our goal in doing so is to shed more light on the nature and scope of NSLs. We minimized redactions to protect privacy interests, but the content of the NSLs remain as they were when served.  We are also publishing the correspondence reflecting the lifting of the nondisclosure restrictions. We have links to the documents below.  In the near future, we will establish a more permanent home for these and additional materials from our Transparency Report.  

Redacted NSLs and FBI correspondence

NSL-10-272979 (FBI notice)

NSL-13-375880 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-394627 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-395838 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-396103 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-396300 (FBI notice)

NSL-15-417535 (FBI notice)

NSL-15-418313 (FBI notice)

NSL-09-264375 (FBI Notice)

NSL-15-417720 (FBI Notice)

NSL-16-421818 (FBI Notice)

While we are encouraged by this development, we will remain vigilant in opposing legislation that would significantly expand the universe of information that can be obtained with an NSL.

The nature of water: unveiling the most detailed view of water on Earth

In 1926, the Mississippi river flooded to its highest level in history, destroying towns and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Since then, dams and thousands of kilometers of levees have been built to control the mighty Mississippi. 60 years on, another effect of the historic flood is becoming apparent. As the river has become calmer, it now also carries a lot less of the sediment that created and replenished the delta. Without that, more than 13 thousand square kilometers of the delta -- an area 10 times the size of London -- is slowly slipping into the Gulf of Mexico. Once again the river is threatening to displace thousands and drown the fragile delta wetlands.

Mississippi delta gif
Mississippi delta sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. Blue is water, white is land, red shows areas of transition. (Source: EC JRC / Google)

The change of the Mississippi over decades is just one of the hundreds of stories of similarly dramatic change around the globe; from the draining of the Aral Sea in the Middle East for crops, to the effects of dam construction in China, or the impacts of the multi-year drought on the Western U.S.  Water has been shaping our planet since it was formed, and still plays a direct and crucial role in all of our lives.

  • The Aral Sea, Kazakhstan
    The Aral Sea, Kazakhstan
  • Poyang Lake, Jiangxi China
    Poyang Lake, Jiangxi China
  • Lake Mead
    Lake Mead, Nevada

Thanks to a partnership between the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and Google, we can now get a view into the past three decades of water on the surface of Earth and see how stories like these have shaped the world over time, in unprecedented detail.   

This project has been a monumental undertaking and was made possible by new data processing methods, running the analysis on thousands of high performance computers at the same time. It took three years to download 1.8 petabytes of data from the USGS/NASA Landsat satellite program and prepare that for analysis. Each pixel in 3 million satellite images, going all the way back to 1984, was examined by a computer algorithm developed by the Joint Research Center running on the Google Earth Engine platform. More than 10 million hours of computing time was needed for this, roughly equivalent to a modern 2-core computer running day and night for 600 years.  

The results for the first time allow us to map and measure changes in the water surface over time with a 30-meter accuracy, month-by-month, over 32 years. Here are some of our findings:  

  • 90 thousand square kilometers of water - the equivalent of half of the lakes in Europe - have vanished altogether. Over 200 thousand square kilometers of new, mostly man-made water bodies came into existence.

  • The continuing drying up of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan accounts for the biggest loss in the world.

  • Iran and Afghanistan lost over a half, Iraq over a third of its water area.

  • Although the area covered by water in the U.S. has overall increased a little, a combination of drought and sustained demand for water have seen six western states, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, account for a third of the loss in U.S. water surface. 

The research findings and the maps, published today in the journal Nature, are available for you to explore on this new website.  The data are also freely available in Google Earth Engine for further research, use, and download.  These new maps, statistics and the stories of change they reveal provide essential information which can aid global water security, agricultural planning, disaster preparedness, public health, climate understanding and more, offering the most detailed view to date of one of our planet’s most vital resources.

With contributions from Alan Belward, Andrew Cottam and Jean-François Pekel, Joint Research Centre, European Commission

The nature of water: unveiling the most detailed view of water on Earth

In 1926, the Mississippi river flooded to its highest level in history, destroying towns and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Since then, dams and thousands of kilometers of levees have been built to control the mighty Mississippi. 60 years on, another effect of the historic flood is becoming apparent. As the river has become calmer, it now also carries a lot less of the sediment that created and replenished the delta. Without that, more than 13 thousand square kilometers of the delta -- an area 10 times the size of London -- is slowly slipping into the Gulf of Mexico. Once again the river is threatening to displace thousands and drown the fragile delta wetlands.

Mississippi delta gif
Mississippi delta sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. Blue is water, white is land, red shows areas of transition. (Source: EC JRC / Google)

The change of the Mississippi over decades is just one of the hundreds of stories of similarly dramatic change around the globe; from the draining of the Aral Sea in the Middle East for crops, to the effects of dam construction in China, or the impacts of the multi-year drought on the Western U.S.  Water has been shaping our planet since it was formed, and still plays a direct and crucial role in all of our lives.

  • The Aral Sea, Kazakhstan
    The Aral Sea, Kazakhstan
  • Poyang Lake, Jiangxi China
    Poyang Lake, Jiangxi China
  • Lake Mead
    Lake Mead, Nevada

Thanks to a partnership between the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and Google, we can now get a view into the past three decades of water on the surface of Earth and see how stories like these have shaped the world over time, in unprecedented detail.   

This project has been a monumental undertaking and was made possible by new data processing methods, running the analysis on thousands of high performance computers at the same time. It took three years to download 1.8 petabytes of data from the USGS/NASA Landsat satellite program and prepare that for analysis. Each pixel in 3 million satellite images, going all the way back to 1984, was examined by a computer algorithm developed by the Joint Research Center running on the Google Earth Engine platform. More than 10 million hours of computing time was needed for this, roughly equivalent to a modern 2-core computer running day and night for 600 years.  

Karkheh River
Karkheh River in Iran backing up behind a dam from 1984 to 2015 (Source: EC JRC / Google)

The results for the first time allow us to map and measure changes in the water surface over time with a 30-meter accuracy, month-by-month, over 32 years. Here are some of our findings:  

  • 90 thousand square kilometers of water - the equivalent of half of the lakes in Europe - have vanished altogether. Over 200 thousand square kilometers of new, mostly man-made water bodies came into existence.

  • The continuing drying up of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan accounts for the biggest loss in the world.

  • Iran and Afghanistan lost over a half, Iraq over a third of its water area.

  • Although the area covered by water in the U.S. has overall increased a little, a combination of drought and sustained demand for water have seen six western states, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, account for a third of the loss in U.S. water surface. 

Tibetan plateau
Lakes throughout the Tibetan Plateau have expanded in size over the past 30 years. (Source: EC JRC / Google)

The research findings and the maps, published today in the journal Nature, are available for you to explore on this new website.  The data are also freely available in Google Earth Engine for further research, use, and download.  These new maps, statistics and the stories of change they reveal provide essential information which can aid global water security, agricultural planning, disaster preparedness, public health, climate understanding and more, offering the most detailed view to date of one of our planet’s most vital resources.

With contributions from Alan Belward, Andrew Cottam and Jean-François Pekel, Joint Research Centre, European Commission

Building on Surveillance Reform

Today, we've updated our Transparency Report on government requests for user data.  Globally, we received 44,943 government requests for information regarding 76,713 accounts during the first half of 2016.  We provided user information in response to 64% of those requests, which remains unchanged from the previous reporting period (i.e. the second half of 2015).  We also received our first ever requests from the following countries: Algeria, Belarus, Cayman Islands, El Salvador, Fiji, and Saudi Arabia. In addition, pursuant to the USA Freedom Act, the FBI lifted a gag restriction on an NSL issued in the second half of 2015. To reflect this, we have updated the range of NSLs received in that period — July to December 2015 — from 0-499 to 1-499.

As we have noted in the past, when we receive a request for user information, we review it carefully and only provide information within the scope and authority of the request.  The privacy and security of the data that users store with Google is central to our approach.  Before producing data in response to a government request, we make sure it strictly follows the law, for example to compel us to disclose content in criminal cases we require the government use a search warrant, and that it complies with Google's strict policies (to prevent overreach that can compromise users’ privacy).  

In the US, in the current reporting period, Google saw an increase in the number of accounts covered by requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (21,000-21,499), compared to the previous reporting period (16,000-16,499). (Note that the USA Freedom Act authorizes companies like Google to report these figures in ranges, but not precise numbers.) 

In recent years, the United States has implemented or enacted meaningful surveillance reforms.  And the U.S. Congress is beginning the process of assessing potential reforms to Section 702 of FISA, which authorizes surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States.   We look forward to working together with others in our industry on continuing surveillance reform in the U.S. and around the world.

Building on Surveillance Reform

Today, we've updated our Transparency Report on government requests for user data.  Globally, we received 44,943 government requests for information regarding 76,713 accounts during the first half of 2016.  We provided user information in response to 64% of those requests, which remains unchanged from the previous reporting period (i.e. the second half of 2015).  We also received our first ever requests from the following countries: Algeria, Belarus, Cayman Islands, El Salvador, Fiji, and Saudi Arabia. In addition, pursuant to the USA Freedom Act, the FBI lifted a gag restriction on an NSL issued in the second half of 2015. To reflect this, we have updated the range of NSLs received in that period — July to December 2015 — from 0-499 to 1-499.

As we have noted in the past, when we receive a request for user information, we review it carefully and only provide information within the scope and authority of the request.  The privacy and security of the data that users store with Google is central to our approach.  Before producing data in response to a government request, we make sure it strictly follows the law, for example to compel us to disclose content in criminal cases we require the government use a search warrant, and that it complies with Google's strict policies (to prevent overreach that can compromise users’ privacy).  

In the US, in the current reporting period, Google saw an increase in the number of accounts covered by requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (21,000-21,499), compared to the previous reporting period (16,000-16,499). (Note that the USA Freedom Act authorizes companies like Google to report these figures in ranges, but not precise numbers.) 

In recent years, the United States has implemented or enacted meaningful surveillance reforms.  And the U.S. Congress is beginning the process of assessing potential reforms to Section 702 of FISA, which authorizes surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States.   We look forward to working together with others in our industry on continuing surveillance reform in the U.S. and around the world.

Building on Surveillance Reform

Today, we've updated our Transparency Report on government requests for user data.  Globally, we received 44,943 government requests for information regarding 76,713 accounts during the first half of 2016.  We provided user information in response to 64% of those requests, which remains unchanged from the previous reporting period (i.e. the second half of 2015).  We also received our first ever requests from the following countries: Algeria, Belarus, Cayman Islands, El Salvador, Fiji, and Saudi Arabia. In addition, pursuant to the USA Freedom Act, the FBI lifted a gag restriction on an NSL issued in the second half of 2015. To reflect this, we have updated the range of NSLs received in that period — July to December 2015 — from 0-499 to 1-499.

As we have noted in the past, when we receive a request for user information, we review it carefully and only provide information within the scope and authority of the request.  The privacy and security of the data that users store with Google is central to our approach.  Before producing data in response to a government request, we make sure it strictly follows the law, for example to compel us to disclose content in criminal cases we require the government use a search warrant, and that it complies with Google's strict policies (to prevent overreach that can compromise users’ privacy).  

In the US, in the current reporting period, Google saw an increase in the number of accounts covered by requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (21,000-21,499), compared to the previous reporting period (16,000-16,499). (Note that the USA Freedom Act authorizes companies like Google to report these figures in ranges, but not precise numbers.) 

In recent years, the United States has implemented or enacted meaningful surveillance reforms.  And the U.S. Congress is beginning the process of assessing potential reforms to Section 702 of FISA, which authorizes surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States.   We look forward to working together with others in our industry on continuing surveillance reform in the U.S. and around the world.

Building on Surveillance Reform

Today, we've updated our Transparency Report on government requests for user data.  Globally, we received 44,943 government requests for information regarding 76,713 accounts during the first half of 2016.  We provided user information in response to 64% of those requests, which remains unchanged from the previous reporting period (i.e. the second half of 2015).  We also received our first ever requests from the following countries: Algeria, Belarus, Cayman Islands, El Salvador, Fiji, and Saudi Arabia. In addition, pursuant to the USA Freedom Act, the FBI lifted a gag restriction on an NSL issued in the second half of 2015. To reflect this, we have updated the range of NSLs received in that period — July to December 2015 — from 0-499 to 1-499.

As we have noted in the past, when we receive a request for user information, we review it carefully and only provide information within the scope and authority of the request.  The privacy and security of the data that users store with Google is central to our approach.  Before producing data in response to a government request, we make sure it strictly follows the law, for example to compel us to disclose content in criminal cases we require the government use a search warrant, and that it complies with Google's strict policies (to prevent overreach that can compromise users’ privacy).  

In the US, in the current reporting period, Google saw an increase in the number of accounts covered by requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (21,000-21,499), compared to the previous reporting period (16,000-16,499). (Note that the USA Freedom Act authorizes companies like Google to report these figures in ranges, but not precise numbers.) 

In recent years, the United States has implemented or enacted meaningful surveillance reforms.  And the U.S. Congress is beginning the process of assessing potential reforms to Section 702 of FISA, which authorizes surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States.   We look forward to working together with others in our industry on continuing surveillance reform in the U.S. and around the world.

Building on Surveillance Reform

Today, we've updated our Transparency Report on government requests for user data.  Globally, we received 44,943 government requests for information regarding 76,713 accounts during the first half of 2016.  We provided user information in response to 64% of those requests, which remains unchanged from the previous reporting period (i.e. the second half of 2015).  We also received our first ever requests from the following countries: Algeria, Belarus, Cayman Islands, El Salvador, Fiji, and Saudi Arabia. In addition, pursuant to the USA Freedom Act, the FBI lifted a gag restriction on an NSL issued in the second half of 2015. To reflect this, we have updated the range of NSLs received in that period — July to December 2015 — from 0-499 to 1-499.

As we have noted in the past, when we receive a request for user information, we review it carefully and only provide information within the scope and authority of the request.  The privacy and security of the data that users store with Google is central to our approach.  Before producing data in response to a government request, we make sure it strictly follows the law, for example to compel us to disclose content in criminal cases we require the government use a search warrant, and that it complies with Google's strict policies (to prevent overreach that can compromise users’ privacy).  

In the US, in the current reporting period, Google saw an increase in the number of accounts covered by requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (21,000-21,499), compared to the previous reporting period (16,000-16,499). (Note that the USA Freedom Act authorizes companies like Google to report these figures in ranges, but not precise numbers.) 

In recent years, the United States has implemented or enacted meaningful surveillance reforms.  And the U.S. Congress is beginning the process of assessing potential reforms to Section 702 of FISA, which authorizes surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States.   We look forward to working together with others in our industry on continuing surveillance reform in the U.S. and around the world.

Strengthening the security of your Google account

Posted by  Stephan Somogyi, Google Security Team

Our users trust Google with some of their most precious data — family photos, emails, work documents, and more. It's our responsibility to keep your information safe and secure, and provide simple, useful ways for you to manage it.


We also have additional tools you can use to give your account extra protection. More than five years ago, we introduced two-step verification, a tool which offers an added layer of security to your account. With two-step verification, you need something more than just your password—a simple prompt on your phone, a code generated by an app, or a security key— in order to access your account. This makes it much tougher for the bad guys to get into your account, even if they’ve somehow gotten your password.


Today, the White House, in partnership with the National Cyber Security Alliance, launched the Lock Down Your Login campaign to educate Americans about better ways to keep their online accounts secure. It’s a great opportunity to remind everyone about the different two-step verification options available to protect your Google account. To enable two-step verification, go to the “Sign-in & Security” section of My Account or click here to learn more.