Google Brazil in hot water with authorities

Stan Beer
Sunday, 03 September 2006 16:20

Your IT - Home IT

The Brazil office of search leader Google has been threatened with massive fines unless it complies with an a federal judges's order to hand over data on users of the South American country's most popular social networking site.

Last week Google Brazil was given just 15 days to comply with an order made in the federal civil court by Judge Jose Lunardelli to hand over data on users of the Orkut site suspected of being involved in pedophilia, pornography and other crimes. The Google office faces fines of US$23,000 for each day it doesn't comply.

The prosecution in Brazil has also asked for the local Google office to be fined US$61 million for "moral harm" caused to the populace as a result of Google's failure to cooperate with authorities in its investifation of criminal activities on Orkut.

Orkut is Brazil's most popular social networking site and has more than 20 million users.

Google Brazil is basing its defence on the fact that it has already cooperated fully with Brazilian authorities. However, the data related to the users of the Orkut site is housed on servers in the US, therefore the company maintains that the request from the Brazilian authorities for user data related to Orkut should be made to Google headquarters in Mountain View California.

Google in the US has already indicated how protective of its user data the company is, when it successfully defied a US Department Justice of Order to hand over data related to an investigation made late last year.

However, it remains to be seen whether Google Brazil's defence that it is just a sales office and has no access to user data on Orkut will hold up as a defence in the Brazilian justice system. Regardless of where the data is housed, Orkut is a Brazilian site aimed at Brazilan audiences and is promoted through Google Brazil.