Following up on previous Boing Boing posts about reports that Google's social networking service Orkut
is the subject of law enforcement investigations in India and Brazil, we now have a statement from Google spokeswoman Victoria Grand:
The reporting tool that was offered to authorities acts as a hotline to
Google Inc., allowing the authorities to communicate requests for removal of
content to us. The reporting tool does not give the police any privilege
other than a speedier vehicle to notify Google Inc. about flagged users or
communities.Authorities have no access to user data and can not remove
content themselves by using this tool. The tool is not used to provide
authorities with user information such as IP addresses. Google investigates
reports received by the authorities via the reporting tool to determine
whether a user or community has in fact violated orkut's terms of use.Authorities may use the reporting tool to ask Google to preserve user
identifying information for a certain period of time (in anticipation of
serving formal legal process for such information), and we will preserve the
information accordingly. But no user data is turned over to the authorities
absent valid legal process.
Previously on BoingBoing:
