Google prosecuted in Brazil to hand over user data

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 23 August 2006 15:40

Your IT - Home IT

Google is in danger of being shut-down in Brazil and faces a possible US$61 million fine for refusing to hand over user information associated with one of its social networking sites.

The problem is that the Sao Paulo based federal prosecutor's office alleges that pages on Google's Orkut social networking site are used to promote child porn and other criminal activity. So the prosector wants a federal judge to order Google Brazil to hand over the data on users associated with those pages.

Google maintains that as the data is housed on a server in the US, the request should be made to Google headquarters in the US.

Meanwhile Google in Brazil is using the defence that it has already handed over all the information that is able to and does not have the data about Orkut users that is being requested.

The Brazilian case highlights an issue that has been brewing for sometime over the information that search engine and other internet companies keep on their databases about their users.

The recent blunder made by AOL in which the internet company erroneously published 20 million search requests made by 658,000 users demonstrated that a detailed level of information can be obtained on even anonymous users simply by grouping together unique user ID numbers.

Early this year, Google successfully defended a subpoena from the US Department of Justice to hand over its data in another child porn investigation case.

No doubt, Google wants to use the same US laws to protect itself from the Brazilian legal system. The problem is that Brazil, like many other countries, may decide that data associated with websites that target audiences in its jurisdiction also falls within its jurisdiction, especially in criminal investigation cases.

Brazil is by no means a totalitarian regime but its privacy laws differ from those of the US. If a Brazilian judge decides that Google must hand over data or pay a hefty fine and shut down its local operations then it sets a dangerous precedent for Google.

What happens if the Chinese Government makes a similar demand of Google China to hand over data in an attempt to track down dissidents? Google may hold the Chinese user data on US servers but Chinese law may require that it hand over data or have its Chinese office censured and shut down.

The same thing holds true for Yahoo, Microsoft and any social networking site that chooses to operate in jurisdictions where privacy of the individual is not paramount in the legal system.