Video Related To: Brazil court order Google exec arrest over election ads on YouTube

A US law enforcement agency petitioned Google to take down a YouTube video showing police brutality, the web giant revealed in a new report. Google said it refused the request though it did not specify why. "We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove," Google wrote in its Transparency Report. "Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests." Of the 757 items that Google was asked to remove by the US government in the first half of 2011, eighty percent were motivated by allegations of defamation. The company complied with 63 percent of the US government's requests. Google noted that it may decline to comply with requests to remove content because an agency has failed to obtain a court order. The Atlantic's Rebecca Rosen praised Google for its decision to deny the law enforcement agency's request, arguing that the move sets a powerful precedent: With this report, Google seems to be indicating that users who post such videos have the company's protection. In places like Egypt and Tunisia, the spread of videos portraying government brutality seems to have galvanized protesters. If Google were to take down such videos, that could have a powerful detrimental effect on the Occupy movement <b>...</b>