According to the Transparency Reporting Index by Access Now, 61 companies across the globe have released transparency reports as of 2015, seven of which have revealed that they received requests from the Hong Kong government. This report also includes additional information from these seven SPs.
The first transparency report was published by Google in 2010, revealing the number of requests for information about its users and requests to remove content, with the aim of increasing the transparency around handling such issues. After the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013, a growing number of internet and telecommunication companies published their transparency reports amid increasing concern over privacy by the public, and this has become an ever more common practice in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry. However, no Hong Kong tech firm has pursued such a practice to date.
