Brazil Orders Google's Orkut to Identify Website Pedophiles

A Brazilian Senate panel ordered Google on Wednesday to give it access to 3,261 profiles containing suspected pedophile material on a highly popular social-networking website.

Federal authorities have complained that Internet giant Google refuses to identify users who post criminal material on the social-networking website Orkut.

Under its order, the Brazilian Senate committee that investigates pedophilia would receive all the material that was sought by the authorities, the Senate's official agency reported.

The federal prosecutor for Sao Paulo, Sergio Suiama, told the Senate panel that in the last two years, nearly 90 percent of the 56,000 pedophilia complaints on the Internet were related to Orkut.

Orkut, the Brazilian answer to MySpace and Facebook, counts 27 million users in the South American country.

Suiama said that pedophile actions on Orkut have been helped by a tool allowing users to create private albums only accessible to their contacts.

"The dissemination of Orkut in Brazil has turned the country into a distributor of child pornography and Google doesn't seem to be worried by that," he said.

One-third of Brazil's 42 million Internet surfers are between 10 and 15 years old, making measures to combat child pornography on Orkut a matter of urgency, Suiama said.

Google's chief in Brazil, Alexandre Hohagen, said his company may implement in the next few months a filter blocking child pornography that could also help notify authorities about cases of pedophilia.

Brazilian prosecutors have threatened Google with civil and criminal action if it failed to reveal to authorities the private albums on Orkut that contain child pornography by Wednesday.

Source-AFP
SRM/L