Brazilian Justice wants data from Google

Brazilian prosecutors are suing Google Brasil for not giving them information about users that may have exchanged pornographic images of minors. According to the officials, users from the relationship site Orkut have undertaken illegal action in discussing and exchanging the images. A copy of the investigation papers was delivered to the American Embassy in Brasilia, and another shall be forwarded to Google headquarters in the US. If Google does not obey, the prosecutors want the company to pay a daily R$ 200,000 fine (approximately US$ 100,000).

Brazilian justice officials have been constantly asking for help from the company to solve different sort of crimes that may be planned or helped by the nature of the relationship site, similar to other services like MySpace. Since some of these requests have already been granted by the Justice system and the company has yet to give out the information, the prosecutors ask for an additional fine of R$ 130 million (close to US$ 65 million) to be paid by Google.

The Brazilian subsidiary says it will help in any way it can, but argues that the information is stored in the US, and has no access to it. If the orders are not obeyed or the fees paid, prosecutors threaten to demand the subsidiary to be closed.