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

Re:Do no evil

[Tim C]

Cause you know, everyone is entitled to protection of privacy unless suspected (quite possibly innocent, but suspected) of crime-du-jour, whether today's hatred is towards child abuse, terrorism or being member of a communist party.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, but surely investigation of a person suspected of criminal behaviour requires an invasion of their privacy? How else do you gather the information necessary to ascertain their guilt or innocence?

Now TFA makes no reference to subpoenas being served, which is what I find troublesome; it appears that google caved to the threat of legal pressure, rather than due process - *but* I don't know what due process in Brazil is.

they should be treated as innocent until proven guilty, and mere suspicion should never be enough to remove rights that you and I enjoy

It's not as cut and dried as that unfortunately. Sometimes certain rights - like the right to liberty - need to be denied suspects until their innocence is proven, due to the risk of their committing further offences, or of fleeing justice.