On Wednesday, Google turned over approximately 3,261 files to a Brazilian senate commission charged with looking into allegations that illegal images of minors were posted in restricted-access photo albums on Google’s Orkut social networking site. In turning over the data on suspected pedophiles, Google gave into the pressure to lift their confidentiality duty to its users.
In terms of social networking sites, within Brazil, Orkut is by far the post popular choice. It beats out rivals MySpace and Facebook, and about 27 million of Orkut’s 60 million members hail from the country of Brazil.
Orkut has been suspected as being an online gathering spot for pedophiles and child predators, and the Brazilian government claims to have received over 50,000 allegations of pedophilia in recent years, 90% of which they say are related to Orkut.
Demostenes Torres, a member of the senate commission, said that he believes that Google’s information will help to incriminate around 200 pedophiles.
Google met with Brazilian authorities on Wednesday to strike the deal that will see the hand-over of information. In the past, Google had been threatened with both criminal and civil lawsuits if theyd id not comply and release the data.
