Google Denies Data In Brazil Orkut Case

mikesd81 writes, "The AP reports that Google filed a motion in response to a Brazilian judge's deadline to turn over information on users of the company's social networking service Orkut. An earlier AP story gives the background: 'On Aug. 22, Federal Judge Jose Marcos Lunardelli gave Google's Brazilian affiliate until Sept. 28 to release information needed to identify individuals accused of using Orkut to spread child pornography and engage in hate speech against blacks, Jews and homosexuals. Google claims that its Brazilian affiliate cannot provide the information because all the data about Orkut users is stored outside Brazil at the company's U.S.-based headquarters. Google maintains that it is open to requests for information from foreign governments as long as the requests comply with U.S. laws and that they are issued within the country where the information is stored.'" Eight million Brazilians, about a quarter of the country's Internet-using population, are members of Orkut.

Interesting

That's going to be quite a kerfuffle, I would imagine.

Kudos to google for protecting user's rights, though.

Re:Interesting

That's going to be quite a kerfuffle, I would imagine.

Kudos to google for protecting user's rights, though.

And kudos to you, sir, for using the word kerfuffle.

Re:Interesting

I think the point is that Google isn't going to give away information to just anyone who asks, they have to fill out a form and stand in line just like everyone else.

Re:Interesting

Yes kudos to Google for protecting criminals.

Ah, but "criminals" are different in each country, aren't they? From the article:

Google insisted it already had complied with court requests to identify individuals accused of using Orkut to spread child pornography and engage in hate speech against blacks, Jews and homosexuals.

In the US, child pornography is illegal, but you can say anything you want about blacks, Jews, and homosexuals. It's not going to win you any popularity contests, but you can be as much of a racist bigoted anti-semitic prick as you want to be. Frankly, it is frightening that you can be arrested for stating your opinions - no matter how despicable. This is why the "Madonna potentially getting arrested in Germany for offending Christians" news item got so much play state-side.

Re:Interesting

I see. So if AT&T had an office in Saudi Arabia, they should comply with Saudi requests for phone records concerning Americans who had made remarks disparaging to Saudi Arabia, if those records were requested in accordance with Saudi law? Opening an office in a country shouldn't subject your entire opetation to that countries' laws.

Re:Interesting

So, in your opinion, is it better for AT&T (or Google) to not do business in Saudi Arabia (or Brazil), or for them to resist the authorities and get closed down? I'm a little torn on this issue, so I like to hear from people about this. In this case, Google would have had to refuse to do business in Brazil because Brazilian free speech laws are more repressive than in the US. I don't know if I agree with that. If American firms refused to do business in all countries with more restrictive free speech rules than the US, there would be virtually no US presence overseas. Or, more likely, there would hardly be any company based in the US.

cool

stick it to the man using the man, that's what i say. force the world to regulate the internet! thanks google.

National soverignty vs the Internet vs pedophiles?

On one hand, the Brazilian government wants the IPs to go after pedophiles and racist hatemongers. I think we can all get behind throwing such people in very small cells with no windows and melting the key down as they watch.

On the other, this is an American company receiving a demand from Brazil. If they comply with this demand to hand over IPs, who's to say such wonderful democratic places as Saudi Arabia and China won't start demanding information on dissidents and getting it via this precedent (Ok, scratch China... Do No Evil my ass)? If the precedent is very explicitly restricted to pedophiles, then expect find out that everyone the CCP doesn't like are pedophiles.

Unfortunately, such applies to any corrupt authoritarian government. If you have any means of handing them data, they will abuse it to their own ends [Insert standard link to Bush administration here]. So the question becomes, how to hand data over to Brazil to help them hunt down child predators while NOT helping Saudi Arabia jail and murder dissidents.

And overshadowing this is the fact that perverts and hatemongers who are NOT idiots don't talk over plaintext for obvious reasons (like the local government rightfully hunting them down). Given the wide availability of encryption and anonymization tools, it's easily possible to hide from any government you want.

Might I suggest a registry to distinguish between governments that can reasonably be trusted not to misuse requests for identifying information, e.g. Brazil, and corrupt dictatorships like China or Saudi Arabia. Never going to happen because certain dictatorships have America by the economic balls (Thank you, Federal Government, for sending all our industry to China and setting up a $10e11 trade deficit! And for spending $5e11 on Iraq instead of alternate fuels!) and wouldn't take kindly to being disfavored because of their crimes. And if it were created, good like keeping it from being turned into a tool to protect criminals instead (look at the nations that are on the UN Human Rights council). But it's worth dreaming about...

Re:National soverignty vs the Internet vs pedophil

pedophiles and racist hatemongers. I think we can all get behind throwing such people in very small cells with no windows and melting the key down as they watch.

Pedophilia isn't a crime, and neither is hating someone. So, no, not everyone wants to live in your Orwellian fantasy where thoughtcrime is a common reason to throw someone in jail.

Orkut Policy .vs. ongoing enterprise

Google are acting the political entity they are complete with foreign policy and juridical independence.

Google is no longer an ongoing enterprise, folks.

Good.

Google Denies Data In Brazil Orkut Case
 
  Good.

A serious question:

If Google kept their servers in space, or on the moon, or somewhere where no country really has claim, could they just ignore any request by any government to hand over data?

Who owns the data?

If Google owns the data then one option they have is to simply destroy it. No government can compell them to hand over something they no longer have.

Google protects consumer information

I think the reason Google isn't releasing the data is because it would open up a new wound for them. The last thing they want is people in other countries thinking that Google not only collects private data on them, but will release it at the drop of a hat to aviod a long and complicated law suit. They're trying to protect their intregity with this move. I think its a good thing, in this day and age, we don't need more companys like Verizon, Bellsouth, and AT&T giving away our personal information to the government. If we haven't done any thing illegal that they're trying to persue, then our personal information shouldn't be released without our prior knowledge and concent.

Google motto

It's difficult to live up to "Don't be evil.". On one hand protecting users' privacy fits in well with this but on the other taking actions to protect those who clearly aim to do the complete opposite of this doesn't seem to live up to this lofty principle.

China?

Why did then the "oh-so-dont-do-evil-company" comply with China's demand of removing search results... wtf..

Will governments require data be stored locally?

"If you want to do business in our country you must agree to store data in a manner that allows the local judicial system to subpoena it."

Will the CyberCrime Treaty trump Google?

If Brazil says its request is to stop child porn ...

brazilian orkut users?

...that's a lot of orkut users!

Google is refusing for now...

the problem is: the Brazilian prosecutors subpoened Google's Brazilian office.

the Brazilian office doesn't have access to the data stored in the servers, based in the USA. Google's brazilian office is a law firm, probably there are no techies there.

when the brazilian prosecutors present their request properly to Google in USA the data will be handed over. It has been done before:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003739&intsrc=new s_ts_head [computerworld.com]

The downgrading of freedom

First, I have no pity for the child porn distributors. Theoretically it could be very borderline material, but it is probably terribly vile stuff that requires long prison sentences.

The hate speech issue on the other hand is very serious. What is determined to be hate speech in this situation? Is it calling for the genocide of a particular group or is it an offensive joke? Who gets to make a call on this? If someone from Brazil states that affirmative action should be overturned, are they committing a crime? What about concerns about violence in a particular neighborhood? Is implied hate enough for a conviction? If someone believes that homosexuality is immoral and openly say their opinion, do they go to jail? What if they never tell anyone, but they write a journal on their computer which happens to be discovered by the government. Should they go to jail? If the U.S. government turns over this information when such speech is protected in the U.S., it weakens the right of all Americans to speak freely. I'm also concerned about other governments following the example.

A lot of people are against politically incorrect speech, so I'll give an example which is more politically correct. Imagine a woman in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi system for tracking all of her online activates is not logging material as well as it should. She has a sexually explicit chat with a foreigner. The Saudi government's tracking system becomes aware that a chat took place and it had forbidden content, but can't track who made the chat on the Saudi side. That information is stored in a server in the United States which is owned by a company that also does business in Saudi Arabia. Let us say that the woman will face fifty lashes if she is caught. Should the United States government allow that information to be passed to the Saudis?

It is very simple

• Racism and child pornography are crimes in Brazil.
• The subjects who the Brazilian goverment are after are in Brazilian territory.
• Denying this information so the Brazilian police can prosecute these criminals is obstruction of justice, which is a crime.

So no, they are not preserving user rights, they are preventing the investigation to go forward.

Cannot cancel!

I have found that, long after cancelling an Orkut account, the information is still on the site.
I receive messages from people that I cannot respond to, because while they get my information from the
old entry, I have no access to it. Repeated attempts to contact Orkut have been met with silence.

Compare this to SWIFT and the US govt

Google maintains that it is open to requests for information from foreign governments as long as the requests comply with U.S. laws and that they are issued within the country where the information is stored

SWIFT process the majority of fund transfers in and out of the EU.

I wish that SWIFT had acted the same way as Google. Instead they gave the US govt full access to their entire database. SWIFT is a Belgian company, and the Belgian government's investigation into the matter said that SWIFT broke Belgian (and also EU) laws in giving full access.

The Belgian government decided that they would not take action aginst SWIFT as they were between a rock and a hard place, since they coldn't comply with both the US request and EU laws.

Good on Google for standing up for peoples' rights.

You are wrong! Speech isn't the cause of this.

Just to make things a bit clear:
Most messages here are saying brazilian authorities are seeking data because of hate-pages. This isn't the true!
Living here in Brazil I can tell that the Public Ministery i(prossecutors) are looking against pages like scheduling meetings to hit or kill people during football (aka soccer) games, traffic using orkut to sell drugs, defending people who comits crimes - there was even a community for raising funds to free a drug dealer from prison with 1 million reais - child pornografy, fake profiles that hurts people's honror, etc. Hardly they are caring for anti-semitic or anti-black groups, if they don't contain things like "let's join and kill them", apology to crime is a crime around here. Basically people are using orkut to organize crime.

I'm a bit with both sides in this case. I belive google should cooperate with justice in Brazil to prevent people using orkut as a plataform for crime development, and for that they shold obey the brazilian laws, because it's about brazilian people (don't worry, they aren't asking for foreigns data). At same time public ministery is being too hard, they should know that because google is a american company the orders for data release should come from a federal judge, it's not google fault that justice here is very slow and asking for a federal judge help coul in meantime erase all the crime data or being too late for preventing it.
Also, what they are asking is that the orders should have to go to the brazilian representation of google instead of a lawyer google has designated as a representant, what is a bit of arrogant, because the law allows google to use a legal representant instead of the company working group in the country and google can answer to law in any way law allows it to do so.

Just some info from someone who is watching carefully the case because I'm studying Legislation for Informatic this semester in Computer Science, I hope it helps a bit :)

yes to China, no to Brazil? what gives?

First: I don't think it's up to the information pipes to help us catch criminals. I think they should say no to everybody. But there's an asymmetry here. Google participates in reducing freedom of speech in China (even if it's not quite as far down the slope on that as Yahoo). But when it's a matter of catching pedophiles, then suddenly their principles are inviolable?

Re:Brazilians ruined Orkut

I heard about this new site called myspace, you should check it out.

Re:What's gonna happen?

If the situation were reversed, the court would use something called the "minimum contacts" test to decide whether a foreign corporation could be brought before the court. It goes something like this:
1) Does the company have a local presence?
2) Does the company actively target or avail itself of this market?
3) Does this action arise out of the company's contacts with this market?

In this case, the answer to all three of these questions would be yes. Were the tables turned, a US court would certainly order a hypothetical Brazilian Google to produce records, rejecting the jurisdiction argument.

If Google doesn't want to submit to the authority of foreign courts, the only option is to not maintain a presence there and not actively seek out customers in that market.

(IANAL - but I'll be one soon!)

Re:orkut = orgasms in finnis

Given that they're acting like they're the same circlejerk operation from Stanford, it's very not surprising.

Not (just) trolling

I was on Orkut during the Brazilian invasion. They made a concerted attempt to take over the service, posting in Portuguese everywhere, even on communities that were marked as English language. The English-speaking users left by the thousands, and Orkut basically became a Brazilian system. I haven't logged in in months; last time I did I got a bunch of Brazilian spam and that was it.