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Google Helps in Another Arrest of User

* Miss Universe [PersonRank 7]

Sunday, May 18, 2008
16 years ago3,644 views

This time in India. The crime? Vulgar language on Orkut....

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/18/hit-pause-on-the-evil-button-google-assists-in-arrest-of-indian-man/
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Gurgaon-techie-held-for-posting-derogatory-messages-against-Sonia-Gandhi-on-Orkut/311070/

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

As I commented there...

What would interest me though is what exactly Google disclosed, as it’s not discussed here so far. You can look up this person’s profile on Orkut, it’s public, he uses his full name, location, interests, several email addresses (including those using full names) etc. The phrasing which Mike quotes from the article, “It was known that the vulgar message about Sonia Gandhi was circulated through an email address – Rahulvaidindia[put at-character here]gmail.com” could mean anything it seems, it certainly does not equal “Google disclosed this email address, which was previously private” (though it could mean that as well).

India Times has a bit more, suggesting (but not making it 100% clear — I’ve also asked Google, though they rarely reply on such matters):
“[Netaji Shinde, police] said that the police had first asked Google to provide the IP address of the person who posted the message. They learnt that the accused was connected to the net through Bharati Airtel and Sify Internet in Chennai.”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/One_held_for_posting_obscene_Orkut_message_on_Sonia/articleshow/3049971.cms

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[Moved from "Google's Dislosure of Private Data Leads to Jailing of Cyberdissident"]

A man in India was arrested for offending a leading Indian political figure:
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Gurgaon-techie-held-for-posting-derogatory-messages-against-Sonia-Gandhi-on-Orkut/311070/

Rohit Srivastwa [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Now an interesting question
what will happen to those who might have(or soon will) mailed this guy VERY derogatory stuff in real BAD language?

I have seen practical examples like these in previous orkut cases. People will now pounce on this guy to send scrap and emails.

Can this guy by any chance after getting out of jail (if he goes) launch a case on all of them?

shady [PersonRank 3]

16 years ago #

They wanted this guy's ip address? Didn't google say ip address or not personal data and can;t really be used to track people? Hello, google! wake up!

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

There's another similar, older, story which I can't find discussed here.

Someone posted "insulting images" of respected warrior-saint Chatrapati Shivaji on Orkut. The Indian police asked Google for the IP address, which Google provided. The police then presented the ISP (Bharti Airtel) with that IP address and asked who it belonged to.

The ISP mistakenly provided details of the wrong person, who was jailed and reported to have been "beaten by a lathi and asked to use the same bowl to eat and to use in the toilet".

The man has now been freed, and Bharti Airtel has made "an immediate, unqualified apology".

Well, that's how the story is reported by this article anyway:
http://www.techgoss.com/fullstory.aspx?storyid=c22113522220011508011508%205:12:14%20AMS14347

The above link is from this somewhat confused SlashDot story:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/19/148208

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Not sure, are there more and more missing blogoscoped.com posts in the Google index? I had to use a database search:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-09-n67.html

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Indeed the case was well-covered in that November 9 Blogoscoped post.

I had entered lots of keywords into the search box on Blogoscoped's home page. I must admit it never occurred to me that the story might be here despite there being no search results.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> Not sure, are there more and more missing blogoscoped.com
> posts in the Google index?

Perhaps some of them are indexed as (what were previously known as) supplemental results. That post in particular can be found find if you use the exact title:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Google+Shared+IP+for+%22Crime%22+of+Free+Speech

But use the first sentence and it's not returned:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22In+August+this+year%2C+a+citizen+from+India+was+arrested%22

Well, perhaps more accurately, it's only returned when you "repeat the search with the omitted results included" due to all the content "borrowers":

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22In+August+this+year,+a+citizen+from+India+was+arrested%22&filter=0

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Just out of interest, does Blogoscoped submit a sitemap to Google?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I've only added the RSS feed as a Sitemap in the webmaster tools, and I've added a special News sitemap (http://blogoscoped.com/articles-sitemap.xml). I normally hope that Google will figure this out easily, following links and stuff without webmasters starting to work for Google. Perhaps I'm wrong?

If this is a supplemental index problem, is there any way of figuring out which pages or how many are in the supplemental index?

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