After months of evasive answers to the Brazilian authorities, the time of delaying tactics is up for Google in Brazil. The Brazilian Justice has just given 15 days to the Internet search company so that it name names or start paying a 50,000 reais (US$ 23.400) fine a day. The next step is to close Google’s office in the country.
What Brazil is after are data about users and communities of the Orkut community site who are accused of illegal activities, including child pornography, pedophilia and promotion of drugs, racism and hate crimes.
Judge José Marcos Lunardelli, responsible for the sentence called the behavior of Google in the case as "convenient and complacent." The American company has been using the argument that Google Brasil is only an office for marketing and sales and has nothing to do with or ways to access Google’s US-based servers.
Said the judge, "To sell its services in Brazil Google is all primed and ready, but when it’s time to cooperate in the elucidation of crimes they are not." Lunardelly also commented that Google’s assertion reflects "a profound contempt for Brazil’s national sovereignty."
Google can still appeal the decision and the company has already announced that it will not make any comment before they are handed the judge’s preliminary order.
According to the Brazilian Public Ministry, which petitioned for 52 injunctions against Google asking for breach of account secrecy, 38 of which where granted, the Internet company cooperated, and only partially, in six cases.
