September 7, 2006 | In Technology, Politics |
Internet search giant, Google Inc., has taken a dangerous step away from its all-important user privacy principles.
Earlier this week, the search engine agreed to divulge a “small and narrow” selection of personal user data to the government of Brazil, after being threatened with daily fines and a possible shut-down of its offices in the country.
Brazillian authorities claimed that Orkut, a social networking service owned by Google, was being abused for the purposes of illegal pornography, racism, and hate crimes.
Google now says that Brazil’s request isn’t comparable to that of the U.S. goverment earlier this year, since the Brazillian authorities are only asking for a small amount of personal data.
This feeble compromise on user privacy, however, could open up a lot of unpleasant issues for Google in the future. Regardless of how much user information is revealed, giving personally identifiable details to government authorities is a highly dangerous move.
There’s no clear boundry between right and wrong when it comes to divulging private details, meaning that there comes a time when internet content providers need to fight for the right to stay neutral and uninvolved.
Google was right to fight on this issue, and they at least took this opportunity to voice some very valid objections. Caving in to Brazil’s government, however, served to invalidate the point in the end, and could easily come back to haunt the search giant in future privacy battles.
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Comment by Joey — September 17, 2006 #