Hand over the goodies, Brazil tells Chocolate Factory Google has until the end of this week to hand over information collected by its StreetView vehicles in Brazil. In a judgement published Thursday November 7, a federal district court judge has agreed with the country's IBDI (Institute of Computer Policy and Rights) that the Chocolate Factory should hand the court private data …
"As in other countries, Google has long ago pulled the WiFi slurping software from its StreetView vehicles, and told the court the data wasn't used in its products or services."
They forgot to mention that it's Android Location Services which slurps WiFi now and the data slurped with that is used in their products and services instead...
"Brazil is planning legislation, dubbed Marco Civil de Internet, that would provide a civil rights framework for that country's Internet users. The legislation has been criticised by Google and Facebook for its requirement that data be stored within Brazil's borders rather than being shipped back to US data centres."
That is the wonder of the Internet. Leave that country and just let the users access the sites being hosted in other countries. You cannot break the law when you are not in the country and as such not subject to their laws. The users will continue to use your services and then the country can either block access to your sites or let it stand.
What will really happen; Google Facebook and the others will huff and puff and then just put a data center there. That is all that legislation is designed to do anyway. if you want to sell products in Brazil, they make sure it is produced there. Eventually the ITC will be called in and Brazil and companies in Brazil could see that their products cannot be imported elsewhere without a heavy tariff on them.
That is also the wonder of national firewalls.
Great Firewall of China, Great Firewall of Britain (sorry, officially it is supposed to be called PervertWall), seisure of DNS assets in USA - you name it
The idea that "you can take your site offshore" is no longer feasible. All the governments that did not implement certain level of national "protection" before are going to do now. Because of you know who... That catch 22 gunner character...
"You cannot break the law when you are not in the country and as such not subject to their laws". Some prosecuting authorities take a slightly different view, although in this case there might not be any applicable agreements or treaties.
See Gary McKinnon, The Natwest Three, Christopher Tappin etc.
IIRC when the US imposed new visa requirements on arriving foreign nationals, the Brazilians retaliated by doing the same specifically to arriving US passport holders. It could be interesting to see how they might take a creative approach to remedies for this sort of thing.
I guess all governments (and all reporters for not asking the question) are just plain stupid. How come not one of them has confiscated one of the google cars and examimed it in detail to figured out what else it has been recording and what exact equipment is in it? It may have more in it the what every body has been told. If google car has broken the law it can be detained under a search warrant.
As far as we are able to tell at this point, the relevant wording of the decree is this:
"O armazenamento e a recuperação de dados a que se refere o caput deverá ser realizada em centro de processamento de dados fornecido por órgãos e entidades da administração pública federal"
Roughly: the storage and retrieval of data referred to [in this legislation] should be held in data processing [facilities] provided by entities of the federal public administration.
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