Google Inc.'s Brazilian unit has been asked to appear before authorities on Friday to explain what the company was doing to curb crimes allegedly being committed through its Orkut chat rooms.
The Web search engine's Brazil spokesman confirmed that the unit, Google Brasil, had received a summons from the Public Ministry, but he declined to give details. The Public Ministry is similar to a U.S. attorney general's office.
The summons came after a complaint was filed with the ministry by the nongovernmental organization Safernet,
Orkut, a chat room service provided by Google, has around 14 million registered users, nearly 73 percent of whom say they are Brazilian.
"Since June, we have sought out Google to request preventive measures against crimes that are practiced on Orkut, but we never got a response," said Safernet President Thiago Nunes de Oliveira, who is also a professor of information rights at the Pontificia Catholic University of Bahia.
"We found more than 5,000 profiles of users that were publishing images with scenes of child pornography in photo albums," said Oliveira.
He said Google's local administration referred Safernet to Google's headquarters in the United States. But Safernet said that was unacceptable since the crimes were committed in Brazil where the local unit is registered. Google Brasil has offices in Sao Paulo.
Oliveira said that Safernet wants Google to remove illegal material and report users that post it.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.
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