• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Google Inks Deal with Brazilian Prosecutors to Battle Child Porn

Posted on: Thursday, 3 July 2008, 00:50 CDT

Google Inc signed an agreement with Brazilian public prosecutors on Wednesday to help thwart child pornography on its social networking site Orkut.

Google has vowed to preserve access logs of its users for six months to be investigated for illegal conduct. The company also agreed to filter and remove any illegal content on Orkut.

About half of Orkut’s 60 million members reside in Brazil. Prosecutors claim that 90 percent of illegal Internet content under investigation in Brazil involves Orkut.

Alexandre Hohagen, president of Google in Brazil, told a congressional committee, "It's an historic day not only for Brazil but for the Internet in the entire world."

Google said it believes the new agreement was the first internationally. Google had refused to work with prosecutors, saying it was subject only to U.S. laws, said Prosecutor Sergio Suiama. The company denied this, saying it had always been willing to cooperate with Brazilian authorities.

Under the deal, public prosecution withdrew a lawsuit against Google, a company spokesman said.

Of 624 investigations by federal prosecutors in Sao Paulo state through the end of last year into human rights crimes on the Internet, 420 involved child pornography on Orkut.

"Orkut was lawless," said Suiama.

The committee, which under Brazilian law has some police and judicial powers, ordered the investigation of 18,000 Orkut photo albums accused of harbouring child pornography.

Source: redOrbit staff, BBC, and wire reports

More News in this Category