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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."

3 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.