Google Brazil unit called on chat room complaint

Sao Paulo (Brazil), Mar 10: Google Inc's Brazilian unit has been asked to appear before authorities today (Mar 10, 2006) to explain what the company is doing to curb crimes allegedly being committed through its Orkut chat rooms.

The Web search engine's Brazil spokesman confirmed that the unit, Google Brasil, had received a summons from the Public Ministry, but he declined to give details. The Public Ministry is similar to the US attorney general's office.

A spokeswoman at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, said by email that the company ''is happy to cooperate with Brazilian authorities to explain the Orkut policies and discuss the service.'' Orkut's terms of service prohibit illegal activity including child pornography as well as hate speech and advocating violence, the spokeswoman said.

The summons came after a complaint was filed with the ministry by the nongovernmental organization Safernet, http://www.safernet.org.br, which monitors crime on the Internet.

Orkut, a chat room service provided by Google, has around 14 million registered users, nearly 73 per cent of whom say they are Brazilian.

''Since June, we have sought out Google to request preventive measures against crimes that are practiced on Orkut, but we never got a response,'' said Safernet President Thiago Nunes de Oliveira, who is also a professor of information rights at the Pontificia Catholic University of Bahia.

''We found more than 5,000 profiles of users that were publishing images with scenes of child pornography in photo albums,'' said Oliveira.

He said Google's local administration referred Safernet to Google's headquarters in the United States. But Safernet said that was unacceptable since the crimes were committed in Brazil where the local unit is registered. Google Brazil has offices in Sao Paulo.

The summons comes as authorities around the world are taking a tougher line on online services as alleged havens for crime and sexual predators. In the United States, for example, News Corp's MySpace.com, a social networking craze among teenagers, has become the subject of numerous investigations by police around the country who say adults use the site to solicit sex with minors.

The Connecticut attorney general has said he is investigating.

Oliveira said that Safernet wants Google to remove illegal material and report users that post it.

Reuters