Rio 2016 Olympic committee fires employees for privacy breach in London

10 Brazilian workers downloaded data without permission

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) —  The organizing committee of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games fired 10 employees for downloading data without permission from computers at the London Games this year.

The employees were working at the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), as part of the partnership between the two organizations, said the Rio 2016 committee.

"Those involved were identified and the Rio 2016 and LOCOG leadership acted jointly and swiftly to fix the situation. All of the files were recovered and given back and the employees were fired from Rio 2016," said the Brazilian committee. The type of data was not specified.

The 10 employees, who were Brazilian, were working in different departments of the London committee, giving them access to files on the LOCOG computers. The incident was discovered soon after the end of the Olympic Games on Aug. 12 and the employees were fired after returning to Brazil.

Around 200 representatives from Rio 2016 participated in the staging of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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