The Brazil office of search giant Google has agreed to comply with South American authorities to hand over user data on alleged pedophiles and other criminals who use the search engine’s online community site Orkut.com.
Google Brazil in late August was given 15 days to comply with an order made by Judge Jose Lunardelli of the 17th District of the Federal Civil Court to hand over data on users of the Brazilian-based website.
The data being requested in the South American case is aimed at aiding Brazilian law enforcement in identifying people accused of engaging in racism, pedophilia, and homophobia—all considered criminal behavior in the country. Google faced $23,000 in fines for each day of noncompliance.
Orkut.com is similar to the U.S.’s MySpace and FaceBook, wherein online users connect with one another for networking, dating, and personal hobbies and interests. Almost half of Brazil’s 32 million Internet users have a profile on Orkut.
The online company, valued at more than $100 million dollars, sparred with South American authorities when initially asked to hand over the information. Since information on Orkut is stored on U.S. servers, Google asked prosecutors to withdraw the summons against Google Brazil and address new ones to parent company Google Inc. Brazilian authorities complied and rewrote the court orders, and Google now says it will hand over the data.
The U.S.-based Google has made it clear that user-privacy protection is of utmost importance to the company; in 2005, the company successfully defied a U.S. Department Justice of Order to hand over data related to an investigation. According to the Washington Post, Google agreed to hand over the Orkut information because it contained small amounts of user information, as opposed to the entire search index the DOJ requested in the previous year.
“What [South American authorities] are asking for [are] not billions of pages,” says Nicole Wong, Google’s associate general counsel. “In most cases, it’s relatively discrete—small and narrow.”
Some legal and privacy experts say 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,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Google, in its statement, says, “It is and always has been our intention to be as cooperative in the investigation and prosecution of crimes as we possibly can, while being careful to balance the interests of our users and the request from the authorities.”
Safernet, a Brazilian non-governmental organization that combats online crimes, reported that the organization so far this year has passed more than 100,000 complaints to police about Orkut.
