Google refused removal request

Ottawa sought to take down recording of secret meeting

OTTAWA – Three months before the federal government asked Google to remove a YouTube video of someone urinating on a Canadian passport, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans asked the search giant to also remove an audio recording of a secret meeting.

In both cases, Google refused the request.

Google had previously disclosed the request from Passport Canada to remove the video, but DFO said it made the request to remove an audio recording of a closed-door meeting in June 2011 — three months before the Passport Canada request in September of last year.

“This audio recording was of a June 15th internal meeting of the Canadian Coast Guard in a Canadian National Defence secure facility where recordings are prohibited,” DFO wrote in documents tabled in Parliament. “The request was denied, with Google saying the request did not meet the criteria.”

However, it later disappeared because the user who posted it had closed the account.

In the last six months of 2011, the federal government asked Google to remove 163 items, up from the 36 items it targeted in the preceding 12 months, according to Google’s transparency report.

The details of the requests, and which ones were successful, were outlined in documents tabled in Parliament.

In 63 per cent of cases, Google aided or complied with the request.

Google either changed its search algorithms, or helped the department in question install the proper codes to prevent Google’s search from picking up the page in its results.

The National Film Board was among the agencies that made the highest number of requests to Google. The board said its requests related to copyrighted material showing up on the video hosting website YouTube, which Google owns.

“Unfortunately, another Google user can put the same film online again, so with certain new and popular NFB releases, the board might have to repeat the procedure several times over. In all cases however, the film is removed after our request to Google,” the board said in its tabled documents.

There is no government-wide policy on when and how to go about asking third parties to remove online content.

Few agencies have a policy on requesting information be removed from Google, other search engines or social media sites, according to the information departments gave Parliament. Among those who did have a policy were the RCMP, CRTC and the Immigration and Refugee Board.

The Immigration and Refugee Board was able to install a similar patch to remove the names of an unknown number of people who had appeared before the board. The board said the request in February 2008 was made because it didn’t want a simple Google search to lead to names of specific cases.

A second request was made in November of 2011 when the same situation occurred.

In both instances, the board said it sent a message to Google and received an automated response stating that the removal request would be processed in three to five days.

Google helped the Canadian Institutes of Health Research install a “robots.txt” file on its computers that directed Google’s search engine to ignore documents associated with a fellowship application.