14 DAY TRIAL // Hello.com, owned and operated by Google, turned up a big catch in the war against child pornography and, to some extent, averted scarring experiences that were to come if high school teacher Timothy Lynn Brumit were to continue with his 'hobby' and decide to mix business with pleasure. The pedagogue sent over 500 pornographic pictures and videos to a policeman that had an online persona claiming to be a 13-year-old boy.
47-year-old Brumit chose Hello.com because of the option to instantly upload and send the content. The teacher tried to convince the 'boy' to buy a web cam and even live with him. When contacted, Google promptly rose to the occasion, and, unlike other situations when it chose to be secretive, provided the information to the law enforcers without hesitation.
Pornography is one of the main problems with the online age that is upon us, and even porn producing studios asked Google to do something to prevent children from being able to access such content.
However, the Mountain View-based company hasn't always been as helpful as in this situation. It has constantly refused to give up information about members of its orkut social network, even after being asked by a court in Brazil. "In some cases Google has not even preserved the evidence we need to file charges against the pedophiles that use the Internet to spread their ideas," prosecutor Sergio Gardenghi Suiama said in a conference last summer. The Internet company replied that "Google is committed to removing child pornography from Orkut and has been working with the authorities in several states in Brazil ... to deal with this problem through valid legal process."
The first steps have been made in this direction, but one cannot help but wonder, knowing the above, whether Google wasn't helpful only because the big trial is taking place in the United States rather than abroad.