Friday, April 28, 2006
International social-networking flap
Social-networking has the US and Brazilian governments doing some "networking" of their own. Rival Brazilian football fans were organizing a street fight in a US-based social-networking site, Google's Orkut.com (most of Orkut's users are in Brazil), and police monitoring the planning were able to prevent the fight, according to South Africa's IOL.co.za. The international part of the story is a "debate between Brazilian and Google officials appearing before the Chamber of Deputies' Human Rights Committee.
Brazilian authorities monitoring online messages for possible crimes want the US company to turn over users' personal information to help stop crimes an abuse like the street battle between the football fans." Of course, Google's user-privacy struggle is even greater in China (see the New York Times's thorough coverage). [Here's my earlier item on social-networking outside the US.]
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Very interesting. Although I think the soccer fanatics were a little bit "over zealous," I don't think Brazil has any right inside Orkut's servers.
ReplyDeleteIf they feel differently, then they are probably either going to have to ban Orkut (causing a riot) or seek a case on US soil.
PS
Since you don't have backlinks enabled, I want to let you know that I referenced your site on Inside Orkut. Congrats!