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Orkut Linked To Drug Ring Bust

Posted by Zonk on from the connecting-people-in-new-ways dept.

Dynamoo writes "Google's Orkut service has been allegedly used to sell drugs by a Brazilian outfit, according to a BBC news report. According to the report, the dealers offered pot and ecstasy for sale via the system to Brazil's large Orkut user community. Google is reported to be investigating. One interesting issue that springs to mind is: how can you monitor and moderate such a large, multilingual community such as Orkut? And what are the limits of criminal liability in a case like this?"

3 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Legal Liability by netruner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is Cingular, T-Mobile and Verizon's legal liability for illegal activity ranging from petty drug dealing all the way up to terrorism when their products and network are used to perpetrate those crimes?

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    DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
  2. Multilingual? by the_rev_matt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since when is Orkut multilingual? I gave up on the site many many months ago when posting something in english in any of the dozens of forums I was in resulted in 20-30 abusive responses in portuguese.

    The Brazilians took over Orkut long ago, it's useless to anyone else.

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    this is getting old and so are you

    blog

  3. Re:Think of the implications... by mabhatter654 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    this is the result of the misguided idea that law enforcemtn is to prevent crime rather than punish it. Like you just said, openness of the internet is a 2 way street!! reading a public page and "worming" your way into a social circle "old school" is the best way to go! What it means in the USA is we have to become more "amoral" like the europeans and less reactionary and prudish. We need to reduce the number of silly laws officers must enforce... things like public swearing, blow-jobs, some low end drugs, and the host of silly laws designed to give officers a reason to "harrass" you. We need to rid ourselves of the prudish, "bible belt" rules that have everybody checking themselves in fear at the sight of and officer... that's not how a free society should live! Banning nailclippers at the airport checkpoint is no substitute for 100 citizens paying attention to the people around them... i.e. the creepy guy acting stupid planting a bomb!!

    back on track, used properly, they could net a lot of good intel in the drug trade keeping quite instead of playing cowboy... there's no reason Google wouldn't cooperate with investigations by providing logs or even fake accounts if the police just asked rather than made a heavy-handed power grab out of everything they don't understand.