The End of Net Anonymity In Brazil

DieNadel writes, "The Brazilian senate is considering a bill that will make it a crime to join a chat, blog, or download from the Internet without fully identifying oneself first. Privacy groups and Internet providers are very concerned, and are trying to lobby against the bill, but it seems they won't have much success." From the article: "If approved, it will be a crime, punishable with up to 4 years of jail time, to disseminate virus or trojans, unauthorizedly access data banks or networks and send e-mail, join chat, write a blog or download content anonymously."

Comments

So many, many ways around this.

[khasim]

First off, passing a law that the criminals will disregard is just about useless. They're already criminals. Breaking another law is not going to deter them.

Secondly, there are so many ways around this when you are a criminal. Crack someone else's machine and you can do whatever you want as if you were legally that person. Who stupid is that?

If you're really good, you'd crack 2 machines outside Brazil and use them to bounce traffic around before it got to you. Your machine and record would be 100% clean.

Finally, let's talk wireless. Unless the government wants to crack down on unsecured wireless connections, they're going to lose this one.

This is nothing more than an attempt to scare the good citizens into self-censoring their legal activities. And that is disgusting.

Re:So many, many ways around this.

[Control Group]

First off, passing a law that the criminals will disregard is just about useless. They're already criminals. Breaking another law is not going to deter them.

If we paid attention to that logic, we'd have 50% fewer laws than we do.

Not that you're wrong, of course, just that passing laws is how the government proves it's Doing Something, irrespective of wheter the law does anything other than screw the innocent.

And I don't think this varies appreciably from government to government.

Re:Don't Brazil Bash

[rcastro0]

>What is PSDB-MG, anyway? Piece of Shit Damn British MG?

This is slashdot, and you didn't think a question like that would go unanswered, did you ?

PSDB is Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (http://www.psdb.org.br/) translates to the Brazilian Socio-Democracy Party. MG stands for Minas Gerais, the state Senator Azeredo represents.

As a Brazilian I should add:
* PSDB is the leading opposition party in Brazil. Its candidate just lost the presidential race (39% to 61%).
* Normally I wouldn't think this sort of thing to come out of PSDB (usually more liberal than the government). But heck...
* Mr Azeredo has been involved in an unrelated corruption scandal after proposing the law ("valerioduto").
* I also do not agree with such a law, as many brazilians don't (babelfish this, for instance: A Liberdade da Rede corre Perigo)
* This law may not pass (be approved) -- I hope it won't.
* Even if it does, it may not be enforceable, as someone here already pointed out -- Freenet comes to mind.

Re:I am very serious

[quentin_quayle]

Assuming the country also allow freedom to express and identity thief, what is such a bad thing of removing annomity? Yes, I really want to know and read the assumption. So, educate me.

If you mean "assuming the requirement is not abused", that would not be a serious question. Every coercive power over others is always abused, to the greatest degree that interested parties can get away with. The whole problem of freedom is minimizing the opportunities for such abuse.

Of course no one objects to a prohibition of spreading malware. Here are a few of the more obvious problems with the removal-of-anonymity part.

1. Government doesn't like opinions you express, you get hassled, prosecuted or worse on some other pretext.
2. Employer doesn't like opinions you express, you lose the job (on some other pretext).
3. This law is later followed by laws restricting what may be said - e.g. against racism or offending certain groups, as in Europe.
4. Chilling effect on what people are willing to express, because of above items (self censorship).
5. It later leads to an "internet license" requirement which is designed to keep disfavored people offline.
6. Cyber-bullying, as in Korea recently, by hostile people who can find out your physical address.
7. Site operators make deals with advertisers, and then your entire online history is sold and lives forever in corporate databases.
8. Someone uses your credentials and whatever they do is legally attributed to you.
9. When you complain of others' behavior online, the authorities say "Sorry we can't help; despite the law we couldn't identify that person" - maybe they just didn't want to take the trouble. But if you break the law you are prosecuted.
10. ... too many more but I don't have time. Others can follow up.

Re:As always...

[1u3hr]

Yeah, because someone being in favor of better identification of easy terror targets like airlines, and being in favor of better money tracing, automatically means they are in favor of no privacy in society at all.

Yes, right, despite thinking you're being sarcastic. Because collecting huge amounts of information about legitimate travellers does nothing to stop terrorists. Just look at the No Fly List, that catches every terrorist who books a ticket under his own name (i.e., none) while inconveniencing thousands with similar names. Idiotic security theatre. And how many times must it be pointed out that the 9/11 terrorists mostly had legit IDs and clean records; they would have walked though today's security just as easily, after surrendering their shampoo bottles. Money tracing? Similar profiling goes on here, inconveniencing every poor schmuck trying to send money home to his family, if his name happens to be Mohammed, while the actual terrorists duck the whole system.

All the information needed to predict, and prevent, 911, was already in the US government's hands before the event. They need better, smarter analysis, more people on the ground, not more noise. But that's what bureaucrats know how to do, and that's their solution to every problem.

Re:I know something that you don't know.

[maxwell demon]

An arrest full of Anonymous Cowards?
I guess all cell walls soon will contain the words "First Post".

Re:So remember boys and girls...

[megaditto]

How about a short course of bash to go with those Trojans, Susy?

You will get to practice unzip, touch, finger, grep, strip, mount. And last but not least, fsck, dump and sleep