Google Privacy Counsel Facing Criminal Charges 242
ProfJonathan writes "According to a story in the IAPP's Privacy Advisor, Google's Paris-based global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, is facing criminal charges in Italy for defamation based upon a user's posting of a video to Google Video. Mr. Fleischer was on his way to the University of Milan for a speaking engagement when he was met by Italian law enforcement officials. As with the 1997 case of Compuserve's Felix Somm and the 2006 arrest in Texas of BetOnSportsUK's CEO during a layover on a trip to Costa Rica, this case once again highlights the risks faced by executives and employees of online companies whose activities may be legal and protected in their own countries, but illegal elsewhere in the world. Troubling, and worth watching."
Your Corporate Travel Lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
It sucks for those that get arrested, but eventually things will get to the point where people/companies avoid travel to countries with such restrictive laws. That in turn will cut down on business deals and partnerships, etc. The countries will pay for these laws economically.
(On a similar note, the US is probably going to suffer based on the increasing issues with travel in the "Post 911 World.")
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
But we already knew about the criminal charges [slashdot.org]
So here's the story...
1. Italy announces criminal charges against Google exec.
2. Google exec goes to Italy.
3. Google exec gets arrested.
I'm not sure who is stupider, the Italian prosecutor for bringing this case, or the guy who went to a country where there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't call it stupidity. Google has a martyr now.
Re:Guessing how this is going to turn out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically an asshole Italian prosecutor trying to pull off a high-profile publicity stunt to get him the name recognition to jump to a higher elected office. This is like Elliott Spitzer, the crusading Attorney General of New York who parlayed a number of high-profile prosecutions into a successful bid to become Governor... then pissed it all away, but that's another story.
The prosecutor's an asshole, and if there is justice in the world, he'll end up disgraced and out of a job instead of benefitting from wasting everyone's time to aggrandize himself.
Re:Time for Global Law (Score:2, Insightful)
That's cute.
This alone makes the idea futile. To give the law any point you would need to err on the side of the most restrictive, because for any one law you could have the least restrictive be "no law at all" and thus your efforts are pointless.
Which means your laws would effectively be dictated by china and the repressive regimes of the middle east.
Re:hmph (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:hmph (Score:5, Insightful)
In a discussion about IBM patents, for instance, a post bitching about IBM selling equipment to Germany before WWII is a troll. A post bitching about IBM not creating significant new technological advances is on topic, and might be informative or insightful.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? [wikipedia.org]
Re:Guessing how this is going to turn out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guessing how this is going to turn out... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to split hair, but I don't think Google is providing Internet access to local users, which is my definition of an ISP. Rather, it's storing content (videos) on Google Video. That would qualify them in my book as an ICP.
Does that justify a lawsuit and an arrest? I disagree with the law on content providers but I can see why some countries don't accept freedom of speech as an absolute value and want to put some restrictions on it (hate speech being an example).
Re:hmph (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, first, the notion that Google should be accountable to laws demanding censorship is ridiculous. I can think of no instance in which somebody's access to information is inherently harmful, but I can think of dozens in which abridging that access is - when the government is capable of legislating censorship, for instance, you have a whole new host of problems, as information pertaining to government corruption can be suppressed. It is no different from the king being brothers with the man who owns the newspapers.
As for which of Google's actions are reprehensible, well, the actions reprehensible in this case are their continued folding to censorship. In a wider sense, though, their privacy policies are absolutely appalling, as if they're almost positioning themselves to be in complete, monopolistic control of the world's informational and technological infrastructure. Microsoft 2.0.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The latter.
It's about time Americans realised that the rest of the world is comprised of sovereign states not subject to their jurisdiction. I consider this a bit of a trivial case, but there are much more extreme manifestations of this attitude, such as rendition and detention without charge.
It's not an acceptable excuse to say "it's OK for us to do it because we're the Good Guys", because much of the world has good reason to doubt that.
How should Google respond? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were Google, I would respond to this by immediately removing access to Google Video and Youtube from all Italian IP addresses, citing the trial. If I were Google and I was vindictive, I would also remove access to Google.com Google Maps (iPhone users are probably influential in Italy) and GMail.
It would be the over-reacting response to this over-reacting lawsuit which would cause a crisis far greater than necessary, but it would show the world how ridiculous the response would need to be to prevent such lawsuits. I mean - GMail - you can insult someone from there, right? Google.com - you can search insults from there, right?
So to be cautious, they'd just have to turn off those services while this lawsuit was pending.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that I think Bahrain will ever do it - Whenever I stopped there, I found the airport employees to be friendly and ready to help (even if not exactly the best informed), But they do have laws on the books if they ever needed to arrest anyone in USA.
Re:48 hours is plenty hasty... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ought we hold them accountable for harboring terrorism due to lack of rapid response?
That's a really stupid analogy! The answer is no, it's not like you're the arbiter of terrorism, or like your notions or laws on terrorism apply to another sovereign state.
Other than that, yes, his arrest was stupid.
Re:How should Google respond? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Guessing how this is going to turn out... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no practical way to do what they do with pre-screening, any more than there is any practical way for the police to police a city pre-actively. This is an open hosting service where users can post literally tens of thousands of videos in a day easily, amounting to more content than Google could ever possibly police. What they surround it is for, 'gasp', making the money to offer the service! You might impress me if that surroundings was the illegal bit, but all that was perfectly legal. They didn't have any knowing involvement in the content that a user posted. When they were made aware of it, they perfectly properly removed it.
Other countries have had the brains to realize that holding a service like this responsible for what users post is not only beyond impractical, but also counterproductive as it the very open nature of these services allows them to function. To decide otherwise means every message board service, video service, places with user reviews, etc, etc, would suddenly have to essentially shut down or at least remove all user inputs as they couldn't possible afford the overhead to pre-screen all the content they receive. Even slash dot here could not function under that kind of law. And your version is even worse as web providers don't do so for free. They either brand what the user provides with banner ads or whatever, or the user pays them directly, so under your idea that would mean the end to all of the free webspace providers as they all can't risk it anymore either.
Re:Guessing how this is going to turn out... (Score:3, Insightful)
What amuses me is that '5150' is a police call used for people with mental problems. Technically, it's for someone who is a danger to himself, but is frequently misused (even by the police) for any mental case. {http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=5150}
Political show trial (Score:2, Insightful)
"law-enforcement officials in this case are overstepping their bounds"
This case reeks of political moves. Politicians so often have ulterior motives of say one thing but aiming to do another, but ultimately their ulterior motives are always directed towards one goal. They always seek ways to gain more power over others. When this case is looked at from that perspective, of finding ways to gain power and influence over others, (in this case, gaining influence over a global information gathering company) then the game they are playing becomes obvious.
All the "news" commented on here (in the GP post), about what videos Google has allowed are purely emotion generating news stories, designed to bias public opinion against Google and so gain the upper political hand in the general public perception (in their own country, as that is the power base for that government).
Milan public prosecutor Francesco Cajani and his government friends now have Google exactly where they want it. Now all they have to do is dictate the terms their government wants from Google. (Along the lines of give us this information and restrict access to that kind of information).
After all, Google wants to continue to (be allowed to) do business in Italy. Its all power moves.
You seem not to know why is the slope slippery... (Score:2, Insightful)
You want to remove the movie from the freeway race where they drive at 160mph.
But lots of people die at 150mph, so let's remove videos of the freeway race where they drive at 140mph.
But lots of people die at 100mph, so let's remove videos of the freeway race where they drive at 100mph.
Lots of people drive in the freeway at 100mph, so let's remove those videos, too.
But lots of people die at 55mph, so let's remove videos of people driving at 55mph.
But lots of people die at 35mph, so let's remove videos of people driving at 35mph.
But lots of people die in their sleep, so let's remove videos of people sleeping.
Lots of people die when they disagree with the government, so let's remove videos of people that disagree with the government.
In this regard, USofAns are right: freedom of speech is freedom of speech, and it's all or nothing. When you take out _one_ of the videos, you usually open the door for someone dictating the tone.