In Brazil, Google is in the middle of a battle over free speech

Here’s a quiz: Google received more than 1,900 requests from governments worldwide to remove content from its various services last year. Which country led the planet in this dubious category, with 418 such demands?

China? Iran? Syria?

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No. It was democratic, pluralistic, economically vibrant Brazil.

Many Brazilians were mortified last week when a judge detained Google’s top official in the nation over a YouTube video that had stirred ire in a mayoral campaign.

But it was no aberration. The struggle over free speech is playing out most vividly today in countries that are America’s friends rather than its enemies, in nations where the right of expression is embraced in concept but often rankles in practice, say analysts.

That is particularly true among a group of countries – think India, Thailand and Turkey, as well as Brazil – where fragile democratic institutions are struggling to manage the disruptions caused by increasingly pervasive technology.

“Among our friends in the international sphere . . . there’s a huge diversity of opinion about free speech,” said Andrew McLaughlin, a former top Google policy executive and White House technology adviser.

Authoritarian regimes have more straightforward ways to block speech they dislike. China has its “Great Firewall” overseen by armies of censors. Iran is building its own Internet. North Korea, meanwhile, has little online access for its citizens.

Democracies, meanwhile, wrestle continuously over where to draw lines when faced with expression they find unacceptable.

When “The Innocence of Muslims” video sparked deadly riots across much of the Islamic world, India and Indonesia asked YouTube to block the video, which it did. Afghanistan barred access to YouTube entirely. A Russian court on Monday ordered the film blocked as well.

Even in the United States, the White House asked the company, which is owned by Google, to review the video to see if it warranted removal. YouTube declined but temporarily blocked access to it in Egypt and Libya, where rioting was especially severe.

Such moves underscore a central conundrum of technology and free expression: It’s much easier to spread images and ideas than ever before; it also can be easier for governments to block them, especially when they are centralized on the servers of a handful of private companies.

“The larger trend is worrisome,” said Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain. “As content is moving onto particular platforms that are owned, it becomes easier [for government officials] to make those phone calls.”

The number of removal requests to Google, updated regularly on its online Transparency Report, is only a rough proxy of how aggressive governments are in seeking to block speech.

The second-largest number of requests last year, 279, was from the United States, which has an especially large population of users of Google services.Thailand, meanwhile, had a small number of requests, six, but they concerned 374 YouTube videos; Google removed them all.

Tracking the number and nature of complaints to Google offers insights into a nation’s preoccupations.