Growth in requests for information from the Government, seen in the light of the overall growth of the Internet

Like most of you, I have been quite disturbed by the lack of transparency that foisted our Internet companies by the national safety regulations. Unlike many, however, I understand at a deep level the difficult balance between security and information to reveal.

That said, I think that it is necessary that the Internet companies to present to its users, at least a minimum grade, how much information is required to disclose.

Graphics and data courtesy Google and ITU

Some of my colleagues in the national security set insist that any information about who has been requested to provide information and who will not give the terrorists and criminals in strategic information. They claim that, for example, if the terrorists know that Google has provided much information to the Government, then the terrorists would use some other service.

I contend that this is projecting a failure of imagination to the actors of our enemies. Since it is nearly completely obvious for everyone that the Government wants to some information listed on potential enemies from companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, is not as big an intellectual leap to assume that terrorists could make similar assumptions.

Requiring our major Internet players to retain transparency is not, in fact, protects us from terrorist activity. What you are doing, is putting in place, U.S. companies (and they are mostly focused on American companies) on a basis more risky in comparison with its competitors on the other side of the pond.

Allowing these companies to at least generally provide detailed disclosures about how much information have been forced to deliver the Government would help its users to get a better feel for the scope and the percentage (which, frankly, is a small drop in the Ocean) of its total users under investigation.

However, if the companies involved want to actually be transparent, should put their numbers in a broader perspective.

Google, for example, recently launched an ad for reporting, "The Government request for user information double in three years". This is probably true, or at least as true as what the United States Government allows the company that tell us.

But there is another fact that must be weighed against this statement. It has also greatly increased the population of Internet users worldwide. According to ITU (Excel file), the population of Internet use worldwide was 1.7 billion in 2009. By 2013, the world population of individual Internet users has grown to 2.7 trillion.

If I did my math right, that means that Internet population around the world, in the same period of time where doubled the requests of the Government - has increased by about 62 percent. Therefore, it would make sense that has increased the number of requests, because it has increased the total population of the user.

Taking this point important data and factoring in the statements that we have been seeing on requests for information from the Government, we are now seeing a more accurate statement: adjusted for the increase in the population of the Internet, the Government requests for user information have increased by less than 40 per cent.

There are certainly still too many Government requests, and also there is no doubt that our companies must allow more transparency with customers and users. But it is also important to keep the picture in mind and defame not only Government when many security professionals are doing their best to keep us safe.

Congratulations go to the legal team of Google to fight this good fight. It's comforting to know that we have to Google on the side of Internet freedom. But it must be comforting to know that, given the astonishing growth of Internet communications around the world, establishment of security of the United States is not as draconian as many in the press sometimes claim.