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."

Comments

Before you start Google-bashing...

[daniil]

...note that this is about Orkut, not search results.

Re:Before you start Google-bashing...

[voice_of_all_reason]

Lumping your former examples with your latter is a bit unfair. They're not even in the same league. Of course, they do the same thing in America, too.

Racism shouldn't be a crime in and of itself -- freedom of speech is something every country should agree on. The same pithy claim google makes that "we have to abide by their laws!!!oneone" doesn't refuse the fact that they are legitimizing an unjust law.

Do i expect all the employees of Orkut to destroy the data and go to prison for it? No. But it still doesn't make handing over the data justified. What's that cliche about "I vas just following orders..."

Maybe they should stop warehousing data

[Secrity]

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.

Re:Maybe they should stop warehousing data

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"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."

You know what cracks me up? A number of times over the last year, I've heard people brag about how much they love Google because they 'do no evil'. They've even gone as far as to state that they plan on trusting Google until they give them reason to do otherwise. (These comments were always modded up, to boot.) I imagine lots of these people use a GMail account... which they log in with using their browser. So, while they're logged in to GMail, they use Google to browse. The potential here is that they can trace back your searches and tie them to your login. Who needs to log IP addresses when they can identify you that way?

So why does this crack me up? By the time Google does do something 'evil', they've already handed a lot of personal goodies over to Google. Oops...

I do hope I'm wrong, though. I'd like it pointed out if I am. (you see, I like Google as well, and I use Gmail...) I'd feel a lot more comfortable if GMail had stuck to its own domain instead of using mail.google.com.

Google right and wrong

[newhoggy]

Google was right to comply with the court order to hand over information it had collected provided it was very specific and constitutional. We shouldn't expect corporations to be in the business breaking the law.

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.

Re:More Nonsense!

[knightmad]

"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)

We all need heroes

[grasshoppa]

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.

Re:This is a horrifying precedent

[bogado]

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.

Re:More Nonsense!

[TheUnknownCoder]

Of course they could pull the plug on Orkut. But do they really want to do that?
According to Google's Press Release:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - November 17, 2005
[...]
The launch of operations in Latin America further demonstrates Google's ongoing commitment to expanding its international business, and developing the search advertising market in new regions around the world. The office in Sao Paulo, Brazil follows the acquisition of Brazil's Akwan Information Technologies Inc. in July of this year. Akwan has become Google's R&D centre in Brazil.

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.

Re:This is a horrifying precedent

[bigpat]

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.