Google Voluntarily Provides Details Of Anonymous Blogger In Israel
Written by on November 27th, 2007 in Ajax News.
Google has provided the IP address of an anonymous blogger to an Israeli court voluntarily as part of a defamation case.
The defamation case centers on allegations against three members of the Shaarei Tikva council posted on Blogger, including posts that suggested the council members took bribes, pretended to be disabled to gain tax advantages, and that the councilmen have links to organized crime. The councilmen asked the court to order Google to hand over the IP address details of the anonymous blogger but the court did not order Google to do so. Instead Google entered into an arrangement where by they would contact the blogger and give him or her 3 days to respond anonymously to the allegations. There was no response from the blogger so Google handed over the IP address to the court and plantiffs despite there being no legal requirement for them to do so.
Privacy remains a heated issue online, and the case has some resemblance to the now infamous Yahoo/ China case. What’s different in this case is that where as Yahoo was presented with a legal demand for information on an anonymous user, Google has voluntarily provided this information in Israel.
According to Globes Online, Google had initially said that “disclosing the blogger’s identity violated rulings on the balance between freedom of expression and a person’s right to his reputation,” so what changed? This is the same company that refused to comply with US Government requests for information in 2005, a company that prides itself on privacy and its “Do No Evil” mantra. Perhaps the moral of the story: trust no one on privacy, even Google.
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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/191645909/