Google, the leading claimant of "Do no evil," has helped Indian authorities nail a student who used some dirty words on Orkut to satirize an Indian elected official. Google provided information that led to the arrest of 22 year IT professional, Rahul Vaid, who had started an "I hate Sonia Gandhi," community.

Vaid used a Gmail address as a contact, and Google, tracked it and gave the information to authorities to track him down. Criticizing Gandhi is in itself not a crime in India, a democracy. But using vulgar language in your criticism is, and for that Vaid face fines and up to five years imprisonment.

This issue is not quite so simple as I would like it to be. Internet-based businesses have the complex issue of having to comply with national laws wherever the companies operate, which is very often everywhere. There are well-touted cases of Yahoo and Facebook ratting on users in China and Morocco and elsewhere.

The thing about Google is the company slogan implies a certain moral superiority that evidence does not back. In China they have voluntarily complied with national censorship laws, apparently before they were even politely asked to do so. There's also the case of Wael Abbas who had 179 YouTube videos of Egyptian police brurtality and government corruption taken down mysteriously for a while, before the Google subsidiary just as mysteriously restored them.

Maybe Google should tweak its slogan to "Do a little evil, when it is in our business interests.