Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Brazilian Government To Monitor Social Media To Counter Recent Riots

Posted by samzenpus on from the big-brazillian-brother dept.

First time accepted submitter prxp writes "Recent riots in Brazil have taken the Brazilian Government completely by surprise, since most of its intelligence personnel have been assigned to work on the security of Fifa's Confederations Cup, according to 'O Estado de São Paulo' (Google translation), one of Brazil's major newspapers. This is particularly ironic, since protesting against the way Fifa has managed Confederations Cup in Brazil accompanied with overspending by the Brazilian Government is in the heart of these riots. Because of that, ABIN (the Brazilian equivalent to CIA) "has assembled a last minute operation to monitor the Internet" where intelligence officials have been tasked to monitor protesters' every move 'though Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp' in order to "anticipate itineraries and size of riots" among other intel. The legality of such action is unknown, since Brazilian laws prohibit this kind of wiretapping."

6 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Re:O que? ("what?" in Portuguese) by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How can it be against the law to look on Facebook for "Rio Riot Tuesday 3 p.m."?

    --
    Learn to love Alaska
  2. "Monitoring" or "Wiretapping"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Monitoring and wiretapping aren't the same thing. I expect any decent state intelligence agency to have the ability to go on Twitter and read public tweets.

    1. Re:"Monitoring" or "Wiretapping"? by beaverdownunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Monitoring and wiretapping aren't the same thing. I expect any decent state intelligence agency to have the ability to go on Twitter and read public tweets.

      Exactly -- making the argument that monitoring public information is somehow 'eavesdropping' or 'wiretapping' just because you don't want the authorities to see it is pretty weak. I question the relevance of this article full stop -- it's simple prudence to assume that if you post something in a public feed, anyone -- including the government, cops, whoever -- could be reading / watching / listening.

      Suggesting that is somehow 'illegal' is just childish and silly.

  3. legality shmegality by stenvar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Didn't you know? We must destroy democracy and civil liberties in order to save them. One life saved is worth all our civil liberties. Our voters expect no less (and sadly, they really don't).

  4. The lesson to learn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why can't people learn from past mistakes? Do not under any circumstance let your city or country host one of these once every 4 year politically charged sporting events. They are way too expensive for the average citizen, and they're just a get rich quick scheme for a few and a way for politicians to make the naive feel good about them and re-elect them. These events funnel way too much money into building infrastructure that rarely gets used again after the event, and wrecks the local culture by taking away sponsorship money.

    You're much better off getting on a regular championship circuit where you can invest in the infrastructure once and profit from it annually. And the championship circuits are much less politically charged, so the politicians don't gain much from meddling with the events.

  5. Re:just some background by ebno-10db · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, it's educated middle class people in the city protesting that politicians aren't giving them stuff cheaper and that politicians are wasting their money. Remember that Brazil is under a left-wing government headed by the PT (Worker's Party). At least it's not Venezuela, where the left wing government managed to produce a shortage of toilet paper; you really don't want to have riots involving large numbers of people lacking toilet paper; it's likely to be smelly.

    Of course, if Brazil had a free market kind of government, some people would be protesting against that as well because they think they aren't getting their "fair share". They'd want a left wing government that gives them "free stuff", until that left wing government predictably fails to be able to deliver, and then they protest against that. Well, as long as the stay away from fascist or theocratic government and don't run out of toilet paper, the Brazilians should still be mostly OK.

    Silly question: do you actually know much about Brazilian politics and economics, or did you just use a sound bite statistic from one article to justify your generic ideological rant?