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Google to Give Data To Brazilian Court
Edu writes to mention a Washington Post article about Google's olive branch to the Brazilian courts. Despite previously refusing to reveal search information to the U.S. government, the company has announced they'll be releasing information on hate groups to the Brazilian courts. The move is intended to allow the Brazilian government to identify users associated with homophobic and racist groups. From the article: "Orkut pulls objectionable words and pictures from user sites, but Google stores content it feels could be useful in a lawsuit. Orkut is especially popular in Brazil, which accounts for 75 percent of its 17 million users. Legal and privacy experts said that Google had no choice but to comply with the court order. 'From the law enforcement perspective, if the records are in the possession of the business, the business can be compelled to produce them,' said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center."
...note that this is about Orkut, not search results.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Google's habit of logging EVERYTHING is starting to get a bit scary. EVERYTHING that a person has EVER done with ANY of Google's services has been warehoused and is subject to subpoena.
So, no, Google cannot just ignore the laws of countries in which it does business if it doesn't like what they say.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
However, Google was in the wrong for collecting identifying information in the first place. That is where my gripe is. They should be using technical measures to filter out identifying information before it reaches their database. That might include hashing IP addresses for instance so that equality comparisons can be made - but the original IP address rendered unobtainable.
"That way the people of Brazil would clearly know what the government is doing"
People of Brazil (including me) know exactly what the government is doing. It is going after people that are going beyond the "free speech" concept and getting into the "conspiracy to commit crime" realm. And it is not only about hate speech (that, in a certain extent, along with racism, is a crime in Brazil) but also members of criminal organizations ("traficantes") gloating about real world crimes like drug trafficking, weapon smuggling, etc.
This is not the government subpoena'ing for data of all users or random users, but users that broke the law in one way or another. There is probable cause, judicial oversight and a clear description of what is being searched.
(btw, as it is evident by some previous silly mistakes, english is not my first language)
Jurisdiction isn't based on the quality of the legal system.
Unfortunately, though, you are right about the legal system in under-developed countries having a negative impact on investment: a company would rather operate somewhere there is danger of physical violence but can count on the legal system to be fair and consistent (enforce contracts, protect property rights, etc. - think Iraq at the moment) than to operate in a country that might be peaceful but where the legal system is arbitrary and can change at the whim of the ruler (such as most African nations).
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
My 2 cents:
Europe doesn't says that throwing around human sexuality is ok, but saying offensive things is not. It says that even considering something like colour or number of people in a community for anything other than statistics is retarded; and that people should rather have fun. I don't think that is bad.
But google is not it. Seriously, why would anybody put any corporation up on a pedestal?
Google will do what's best for google. End of story. If that means digging in their heels because a legal request is over reaching and would comprimise some aspect of their operations, so be it. If, in another case, it means they hand over the data, that's fair too.
You want a hero? Go hug a firefighter, or a police officer. Or a doctor, or a vet. Not a corporation.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You better give it another look.. a closer look this time. This has NOTHING to do with search data. This is about people using social networking services like orkut to perform drug dealing, hate-spreading speechs, homophobic content and -- if none of those ring a bell to you -- pedophile content, being performed by some Brazillians (I'm a brazillian too).
I don't think Google should handover search terms being used: no one can be punished by whatever they want to learn about; but handing over the Orkut data of these guys can lead to putting away a lot of criminals.
For those talking about how google should just ignore brazillian law and shut down the service, I'd love to see Orkut without 75% of their user-base. I don't use Orkut for that matter (too boring to me)... but I think it would be a huge impact.
Regards,
Alexandre Moreira.
PS: Those bastard criminals using social networking to promote/commit crimes should be put away for good!
And what, may I ask, constitutes a inferior legal system. Sure there are lots of things that I consider inferior in the US legal system, and I am sure that some of those points are what you would consider superior. People think diferent, even if you consider a single country people will disagree on what is fair and what is not.
People in diferent coutries have different morals, some people believe that the laws should reflect their religions, other takes pride in making their government non-religious. The core of this question is that your morals are different from mine, they may even be similar in some aspects but they are different so you can't judge how good is a legal system for me based on your morals.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
According to Google's Press Release:
So they are activelly building an R&D center in Brazil, which will be Google's HQ in Latin America. Businesswise, they have a lot to loose by not complying with a cuort order...
Just my R$0,02.
Uncopyrightable: The longest word you can write without repeating a letter.
I agree, there are assholes in all groups, but there is a difference between what is happening at orkut and south-park. In orkut we are seeing those that are assholes promoting their hate and organizing mobs. This is not only evil, but it is against the law here. And what happened is that google is being accused of collaborating with the perpetrators if the local branch "google-brasil" do not produce the ips and time-stamp of several users (according to the article 70 or so).
I do not agree that google should give those IPs, I'm not even sure that generic speech (this rules out when people are singled out) should be forbidden. But, those arguments do make me sick, and those people do get out and do throw rocks at people, it is speech now, but soon it may be more, so in the end this is a "minority report" conundrum. If you know that this group will throw rocks at someone, would you allow it?
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
This is a choice the people of Brazil made about how they choose to run their society
Democracy does not equal freedom. Freedom is when a society recognizes that some things are none of its business. Democracy is about what to do with everything else.