Google's Brazilian 'social' pages wrangled

SEARCH ENGINE outfit, Google has decided to launch an inquisition into pages on its popular Orkut social site.

The site, which is mostly popular in Brazil, is full to the gunnels with child porn and terror links.

A spokesGoogler said that the inquisition was ordered after complaints from Brazilian authorities and Interweb watch dogs.

The Orkut team will look at all the pages and see if it can identify any as "inconsistent with its principals". Those that are deemed naughty in its sight will be immediately removed.

According to the Brazilian authorities, some community pages seek the assassination of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva or the blowing up of Congress. Others promote child pornography or terrorism.

One of them was suspected of being created by the First Command of the Capital, or PCC, a criminal gang behind a recent wave of violence in Sao Paulo state that killed about 150 people.

Brazilian officials have been leaning on Google to provide it with names and addresses of the owners of such sites, but Google has refused claiming that under US law it could not reveal personal information about its clients. µ

L'INQ
Reuters