The number of data requests made by governments across the globe reached a record high during the second half of 2015, according to Google’s latest Transparency Report. Governments sent more than 40,000 requests during the period, which was significantly more than the 35,365 recorded earlier in the year.

Google has been publishing these reports since 2009 as a means to showing exactly how governments and states are attempting to access online information. The tech giant said that it was “proud” to have been at the forefront of uncovering the surveillance laws and practices enforced by countries around the world and to have paved the way for similar reports from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Google noted in the report that the number of user data requests had increased annually during the last seven years. The 40,677 requests made between July and December 2015 impacted more than 81,000 user accounts – an 18 per cent rise compared to January through June 2015, when there were 68,908 user account data requests.

"We're pleased with some of the improvements we've seen in surveillance laws,” Richard Salgado, Google's Legal Director for Law Enforcement and Information Security, said in an official blog post.  "The European Commission and the United States recently agreed on the Privacy Shield agreement, which includes new undertakings covering procedural protections for surveillance efforts. Earlier this year, President Obama signed the Judicial Redress Act into law, which Google strongly supported.”

The Transparency Report also provides data regarding the number of requests that Google has granted. This figure stood at 76 per cent during the second half of 2010, but Google has since reduced the number to around 64 per cent for the last five years.

The United States currently leads the way with the highest number of data requests at 12,523 for 27,157 users, and Google provided some form of data on 79 per cent of those occasions. Germany was second on the list with 7,491 requests, while France (4,174), the United Kingdom (3,497) and India (3,265) made up the rest of the top five. The request numbers for all of these countries increased during the latest period.