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Google to Give Data To Brazilian Court

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the not-much-they-could-do dept.

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."

4 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe they should stop warehousing data by Secrity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:Before you start Google-bashing... by voice_of_all_reason · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not only that, but it appears in this case they are asking for data concerning "person X", which they apparently have the equivalent of probable cause to obtain.

    Of course, this is ignoring the fact that "promoting hate" should not be a crime in the country Google hails from.

  3. Google right and wrong by newhoggy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  4. Re:More Nonsense! by knightmad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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)