News

Google Helps Police Internet in India

Written on: May 19th 2008
Author: by Kathleen |
Feed: XML Feed

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.

Reader Comments.

This shows the complete lack of freedom of speech in a so called democratic country like India. How can someone be arrested for posting some hateful comments against politicians. Is this India in 2008 or some closeted society in a Medieval era.

Posted by Ajay Shastri | 1:58 pm on May 19, 2008.

No Tags

More News

Features

Automakers Need to Become Better Conversationalists July 2nd 2009
Affiliates can win in the media buy game July 2nd 2009
Crowd-Sourced Ads: A Measured Response June 28th 2009
Is the government coming for you? June 28th 2009
Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It June 25th 2009

Features Archive

Spotlight

Trust Me – I’m a Professional … SEOADOTAS — At WebMetro we typically provide SEO Action Plans as part of campaigns. As the name implies, an SEO [...] more...

Latest News

Readers weigh in on ATT, ad networks and the iPhone July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — In our weekly poll, readers overwhelmingly said that [...] more »
Hiring, promotions, location, partnerships and product news July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — Internet Oldtimers Foundation, Jumptap, eXelate, Kampyle, The Digital [...] more »
OPA large ad units unfurl across the web July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The Online Publishers Association said a group of [...] more »
Email spam in June worst since 2007 July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — MessageLabs Intelligence released its numbers for June, and [...] more »
Joost becomes YouTube roadkill, starts layoffs July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — Despite reworking its technology to work in a [...] more »
Ad networks, not websites, choked on Michael Jackson news July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The news of the pop star’s death saw [...] more »
StrongMail doubling down on social media, buys PopularMedia July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — StrongMail has announced that it acquired PopularMedia, a [...] more »

News Archive

Does the iPhone need to divorce ATT?

yes

no

no, the iPhone just needs multiple partners.

View Results
Loading ...

Polls Archive

Adotas

Where media buyers start online

Navigation

Supplementary Navigation