The tangled David Petraeus scandal highlights how easily the U.S. government can access citizens' private e-mails. The FBI's request to access Paula Broadwell's personal Gmail account was one of 7,969 similar requests Google received from the U.S. government in the first half of 2012, according to Google and news reports. The company said it complied with the requests, either fully or partially, 90% of the time. According to the latest Google Transparency report, Google fielded 20,938 requests for private account data from governments around the world between January and June of this year. That's up from 18,257 such requests during the last half of 2011, the company said.
@highlight
Google's Transparency Report shows increase in government requests for private data
@highlight
U.S. made 7,969 requests for users' Google data in the first six months of 2012
@highlight
Google pushing for an overhaul of the ECPA law which allows warrantless data requests
@placeholder stores huge amounts of data and personal information about its users.