Go, us!

This week at Dublin's Conference for Internet Freedom, deputy assistant secretary of state Thomas Melia criticized foreign governments for their attempts to censor the web. According to the Irish Times, Mr. Melia, who works in the US Bureau of Democracy, told conference-goers, “too many governments were filtering, censoring content, taking down sites, and perpetuating Internet shutdowns.”

As Ars Technica points out, that censure looks a tad hypocritical in the context of Google's latest transparency report.

According to the company, in the second half of 2011, American authorities asked Google to take down more than 3,800 items via court order. Germany, ranked second in the report with 1,304, didn't even come close. And that doesn't take into account the 2,341 removals requested from the United States that didn't involve a court order. In that category, the United Kingdom was second with 750 requests.

For purple mountain majesties, above the [redacted] plain!