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Google Helps Police Internet in India

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May 19, 2008 

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Kathleen  |

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Google Helps Police Internet in India

ADOTAS – It’s a brave new world, and Google is here to help. The company helped the Indian police arrest a 22-year-old IT professional, Rahul Vaid, on Friday.

His crime? Posting derogatory content about Sonia Gandhi, a prominent politician, on an online community (on the social networking site Orkut owned by Google) called “I hate Sonia Gandhi.” The nature of the content has not been disclosed by police.

The messages were sent from Vaid’s Gmail address – rahulvaidinida@gmail.com. The probe into the matter began in December of last year when a political activist in Pune, Maharashtra, India saw the posting and notified police. The Pune police then contacted Google to help them find the person distributing the allegedly obscene content.

Vaid was arraigned on Saturday. He’s been charged under section 292 of the Indian Penal Code and section 67 of the Information Technology act for creating an online profile and posting vulgar content about Sonia Gandhi. He faces five years in prison.

The person who actually created the “I hate Sonia Gandhi” site is not in legal trouble, however. The police say that hating the politician isn’t a crime – but the manner in which Vaid allegedly expressed his displeasure was criminal.

Google has many counterparts in the online world when it comes to bringing down alleged criminals. Last year, Yahoo helped police in China arrest a journalist who criticized the government and in February, Facebook helped Morocco arrest an IT engineer for creating a fake profile of Prince Moulay Rachid.

And this isn’t the first round of bad publicity for Orkut: Last August, police in Mumbai said that a youth was murdered by people he met on Orkut.

Today, Google defended itself, saying that it must comply with local laws.

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