Google Turns Over Data on Suspected Pedophiles In Brazil

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, points to a Yahoo! story which begins "Google on Wednesday handed over data stored by suspected pedophiles on its Orkut social networking site to Brazilian authorities, ceding to pressure to lift its confidentiality duty to its users, officials said."

Comments

As far as I can tell...

[obonicus]

what the Brazilian government asked for is access to several private photo albums for these suspected pedophiles. Apparently there were several Orkut communities being used to trade kiddy porn.

Isn't the entire story.

[Anonymous Coward]

The article simply says "Authorities had threatened Google with criminal and civil lawsuits if it did not comply with opening the restricted online photo albums of users under suspicion".
Which isn't quite the entire truth.
See, for example, http://www.denunciar.org.br/twiki/bin/view/SaferNet/Noticia20071019015559En
and you'll discover
"But Google faced a growing wave of complaints, many instigated by Mr. Tavares. Sérgio Gardenghi Suiama, a federal prosecutor in São Paulo in charge of human rights, began flooding the company's Brazil office with subpoenas seeking identifying information, such as email addresses, of Orkut users accused of committing crimes online.

Under direction from Google's U.S. headquarters, Mr. Hohagen refused to accept the subpoenas. Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, traveled to Brazil to explain the situation."

Eventually, authorities threatened to start arresting Google employees in Brazil, and courts started issuing threats of contempt, so they complied.

Not sure what else you guys were expecting to happen?

Re:Once the government's bitch, evermore their bit

[foobsr]

Please name one example of facism we have in the US where someone was prosecuted for speaking out against the government.

McCarthyism

CC.

Re:Once the government's bitch, evermore their bit

[Cairnarvon]

The sad part is that you got modded Insightful. Note that these are only *suspected* pedophiles, and apparently the authorities couldn't even be bothered to get a warrant to get the same information through legal, uncontroversial channels.
Kneejerk reactions like yours ruin society for the rest of us, far more so than a handful of pedophiles, real or alleged, ever could.

Re:There must be a reasonable middle ground somewh

[tha_mink]

If you had RTFA, you would see that the government didn't get warrants for any of these "suspects" and freely admitted that there wasn't enough evidence to do so. What??? What article are you reading? Please quote said passage in the article.

Re:Stop it

[Enderandrew]

Not really. The Constitution touches on this. You can't be forced to self-incriminate, thusly you have a semblance of privacy. However, you can be searched with probable cause.

Re:Once the government's bitch, evermore their bit

[HiredMan]

Yeah - no one would be arrested for voicing their opinions. Like in NYC during the Republican convention. Or just standing next to someone who was...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/nyregion/12video.html

The FBI wouldn't spy on you for being in a peaceful anti-war group, right?
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MIL20060127&articleId=1835

No one would be arrested because they wore an anti-Bush Tshirt, right?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/17/3243/

And you accuse others of not seeing? Look the f*ck around.

=tkk