Google Turns Over Data on Suspected Pedophiles In Brazil

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, points to a Yahoo! story which begins "Google on Wednesday handed over data stored by suspected pedophiles on its Orkut social networking site to Brazilian authorities, ceding to pressure to lift its confidentiality duty to its users, officials said."

Sorry to inform you, but...

[hummassa]

They use the word "suspects" but they really have probable cause and Google has being trying not to comply with DA's subpoenas for a long time now.

Re:Who posed for the pics, jackass?

[arth1]

What about stories? There doesn't have to be any actual children involved for pedophilia to occur (except the inner child of the person who presumably never grew up, but I'm not a shrink and don't know how their minds work).

Re:Once the government's bitch, evermore their bit

[saleenS281]

The patriot act.

The constitution only bars such a state when it is followed. The executive branch in this country has made a point of proclaiming they are above the constitution and the checks and balances it lays forth, and nobody has done anything about it. It's nice you think a piece of paper will somehow protect your freedoms. The reality is quite different.

Re:Once the government's bitch, evermore their bit

[Opportunist]

Do you honestly believe the privacy should trump child molestation?

I believe privacy should trump having a hunch. There is a difference between "we have good reason to suspect that person and need something to nail the coffin" and "we think he might be a pedo, so hand over anything you have about him so we can get some evidence against him".

I'm fairly sure you can nail me as a terrorist by my google search records. Or as a communist. Or drug cook. Or as anything you want, bluntly. I have a wide range of interests, none of which are in any way "illegal" per se, but can sometimes be used for illegal means.

We're on the verge of making knowledge illegal. Scratch the verge, we're already there with making it illegal to inform people of bomb building. Yes, I know how to make a bomb out of rather easily gathered over the counter chemicals. That doesn't make me a terrorist. I know how to make LSD. That doesn't make me the next drug cook. I read "The Capital" online. That doesn't make me a communist. And I did a lot of other things online that can be forged into evidence with some creativity. I wouldn't even deem it impossible to make me a pedophile by my search records, maybe something I searched for was some sort of code for a pedo page.

That's the difference here.

Re:Stop it

[Mister Whirly]

And "probable cause" is an easy thing for any law enforcement agent to invent from thin air if they want to. And wouldn't taking someone's computer to see what they have been browsing be a form of self-incrimination if they find anything illegal? That is what I am saying - what is reasonable and where do you draw the line?

Re:Once the government's bitch, evermore their bit

[TilJ]

The troubling thing is that the distinction isn't clear ... I can't tell if you mean that "nothing happens" in the "it's acceptable" sense or in the "there's no trial" sense. Depends on who you are, whether you protested in a "free speech zone", who you've phoned in the past few years, or which websites you've visited I guess. And that makes it worse, not better -- trials at least would allow for some form of check and balance oversight system.

A transparent government exposes bad laws/inconsistent enforcement to public scrutiny. That doesn't seem to be "en vogue" anymore.

Further clarification

[tinkerghost]

Google's excuse for not complying with court order, you ask? Well, google told the Brazilian justice system that since the order wasn't isued within the USA they couldn't do a thing about it.
So that's it, folks, do panic for the same thing that's happening in Brazil has been happening in the US for quite a long time. The only difference is that google has kind of a hard time respecting Brazil's sovereigny

Mostly right except you are forgetting several things:

• Google US is a US based company and is subject to US law
• Google BR is a Brazilian company and is subject to Brazilian law
• Google BR is not subject to US law - despite what US judges may think
• Google US is not subject to Brazilian law - despite what Brazilian judges may think
• Google BR was served with a legal request for data they did not posses - it resided in the states under the auspice of Google US.
• Google US was requested to turn over the data - without a US warrant - they refused.

Had Brazil requested help from the FBI they probably would have gotten their data. By trying to force a company to produce something it didn't have, they just created an impasse. Handling cases involving international corps isn't as simplistic as people try to make it out to be. In this case - Google US couldn't just acknowledge Brazil's sovereignty without disregarding the US', and Google BR just couldn't comply with the request because they didn't have the data to give up.

U.S. definition of child pornography

[SETIGuy]

I don't know Canadian law or Brazilian law. In the U.S. (U.S.C. 18 Sec. 2256), child pornography does not require visual depictions of actual children in actual or simulated sexual activity to be present. Child pornography also includes visual depictions of simulated children in sexual activity. You know, that web site you visit with the 18 year old dressed like a school girl? If the government want to press a case against you, that counts as possession of child pornography.

U.S. law also considers anything that advertises itself as containing visual depictions of children in sexual activity to also be child pornography. So if I were to create a link to whitehouse.gov on a web page, and if the web page were to claim the link pointed to pictures of children having sex, that web page would also count as child pornography according to the definitions in the U.S. Code. If you were to have that web page in your cache, you could be prosecuted and convicted of possession of child pornography even though no actual images were involved. The only question is how much the government wants you behind bars. Of course, I could also be prosecuted for creating the page in the first place.

That's how the police state starts.... Make sure everyone has violated enough laws that they can be imprisoned at a moments notice. If everyone is guilty of an imprisonable offense, only people who speak in favor of the government have freedom of speech.

Re:Stop it

[silas_moeckel]

I have one better. It was early spring and my wife and I are having our first night out after a new baby. We decide to go visit the local private nature center since it does not close at dark and is a good place to do some star gazing. It's also a fairly common lovers lane for the teenage set. We are there for about 15 minutes and a cop pulls up and start to give us the move along bit. Now were a quarter mile in the woods down a private road with no lights on. He instructs us that the park is closed after dark etc etc etc. He checks our ID. I mention that the park is not closed at dark and point him to the prominently displayed sign that allows for hiking camping horseback riding catch and release fishing and the "enjoyment of nature" and only forbids cutting down trees, campfires outside of the provided fire rings and leaving trash about. He still insists that we leave or be cited for trespassing so we go. I get over the town line and call his supervisor he wont even take the complaint over the phone and cites that the officer catches a lot of underage drinking and DWI and that he can go onto any private property if he see something suspicious. I let it drop as it's not worth my time.

A few months later the feds arrest the guy for getting underage girls to have sex with him and each other and videotaping it for sale on the internet in exchange for not arresting them on DWI underage drinking and minor drug offenses. He apparently had also been taking the teenage set with a low light camera while at the park.

Long story short cops are rarely white knights most are people doing a job that lets them feed there families with little skills outside what they were taught at the academy. Some are the worst of the bunch abusing the authority that they have sought to there own ends. Ever think that cops and congress critters should be like jury duty?