Brazil Announces Plans To Move Away From US-Centric Internet

trbdavies writes "The Associated Press reports: 'President Dilma Rousseff ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company's network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google. The leader is so angered by the espionage that on Tuesday she postponed next month's scheduled trip to Washington, where she was to be honored with a state dinner.' Among Brazil's plans are a domestic encrypted email service, laying its own fiber optic cable to Europe, requiring services like Facebook and Google to store data generated by Brazilians on servers located in Brazil, and pushing for 'international rules on privacy and security in hardware and software during the U.N. General Assembly meeting later this month.'"

Comments

Well, obviously

[hsmith]

It makes it much easier to spy on your own citizens when you do that. They are just mad they don't have a piece of the action.

Re:Well, obviously

[geek]

It makes it much easier to spy on your own citizens when you do that. They are just mad they don't have a piece of the action.

Regardless of their ability to spy on their own people I think this is a good thing and I say that as a red, white and blue American citizen. I don't like that we control the whole ball of wax. Its time other countries stepped things up and built on what the US started. The internet is supposed to be bigger than any one country.

Re:Well, obviously

[s.petry]

It makes it much easier to spy on your own citizens when you do that. They are just mad they don't have a piece of the action.

Well, they could just be trying to imply that they didn't have a piece of the action. Like the Canada, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc.. all acted shocked and appalled until it came out that their people were cooperating and collaborating with the US Agencies.

At least Brazil in this case appears to have some intestinal fortitude. The others I listed are just praying the stories all go away and maintaining business as usual.

Re:Well, obviously

[Sir_Sri]

The internet is supposed to be bigger than any one country.

The Internet isn't supposed to be tied to country at all.

Oddly, I agree with Eric Schmidt on this - the big risk is if every country starts making their own internet fiefdom and it becomes harder to operate and connect internationally. Of course Eric Schmidt said this, as one of the companies responsible for helping with the spying he's worried about the ripple effects from.

Re:Well, obviously

[gmuslera]

And how that is worse than being spied, controlled, and manipulated by a foreing country, one that had no problem supporting the overthrow of a democratically elected president in Brazil in 1963, and that don't have clear hands on the recent revolutions in the middle east. Remember, they are reacting to what US is doing, place the fault where really is.

Re:Well, obviously

[X.25]

It makes it much easier to spy on your own citizens when you do that. They are just mad they don't have a piece of the action.

You are an idiot and you don't realize that NSA has been intercepting SMS messages (by means of breaking into mobile operator network(s) in Brazil) of Brazilian president. And probably much more (other targets were not named).

Where does that fit into?

War on terror? War on child pornography, perhaps?

Intercepting Brazilian oil company mails/traffic is required in order to fight... terrorism?

Americans still do not understand the consequences of their actions (well, NSA's and government actions). People have given their trust to US government and their agencies, and USA has betrayed them at all possible levels.

USA has now publicy said that they are ok with what NSA has been doing - things that USA themselves consider to be 'acts of war'.

I presume now everyone else will consider it to be okay too.

Re:Well, obviously

[Obfuscant]

At least Brazil in this case appears to have some intestinal fortitude.

Brazil, as a whole, seems rather uninterested in the matter. The Brazilian leader is making hay while the sun shines, as the saying goes. While the concept is interesting, the truth is that once a packet leaves your own wires you have no real control over where it goes.

This is the same kind of action that Brazil took in response to the US creation of a VISA processing fee. Brazil was quite up-front in admitting that their fee of the same amount was a direct response to the US fee for Brazilian citizens going to the US. Us old folks would say they cut off their nose to spite their face.

I'm particularly worried about the statement that they may require servers to keep data in Brazil. I manage a lot of data from Brazil, and their network infrastructure is so shaky as it is that it would be impossible to manage it remotely.

Re:Well, obviously

[tlhIngan]

It makes it much easier to spy on your own citizens when you do that. They are just mad they don't have a piece of the action.

Regardless of their ability to spy on their own people I think this is a good thing and I say that as a red, white and blue American citizen. I don't like that we control the whole ball of wax. Its time other countries stepped things up and built on what the US started. The internet is supposed to be bigger than any one country.

What happens is that the internet gets fractured - you'll have the "US Intenret", the "Brazil Internet" just like we have the "Iran Internet", and to a lesser extent, the "China Internet". All little networks running separate and independent.

Today the internet is bigger than any one country - even the NSA can't tap all of it, and it's likely the stuff they tapped they did things like running TOR exit nodes and monitored the data that way.

But tomorrow, the internet will shrivel up (hey, we don't need IPv6 anymore!) as every country runs its own version of the internet, and wanting to connect to the bigger part around it well, you're a terrorist.

Re:Well, obviously

[NatasRevol]

Maybe Mr. Schmidt should encourage the US government to stop forcing people into fiefdoms just to have some security.

Re:Well, obviously

[nurb432]

I don't like that we control the whole ball of wax.

In reality we don't. That is part of the problem. And we are no worse/better than anyone else. We just got caught with our hand in the jar, that everyone else is pulling cookies out of too.

Re:Well, obviously

[Guy Harris]

It makes it much easier to spy on your own citizens when you do that. They are just mad they don't have a piece of the action.

Regardless of their ability to spy on their own people I think this is a good thing and I say that as a red, white and blue American citizen. I don't like that we control the whole ball of wax. Its time other countries stepped things up and built on what the US started. The internet is supposed to be bigger than any one country.

What happens is that the internet gets fractured - you'll have the "US Intenret", the "Brazil Internet" just like we have the "Iran Internet", and to a lesser extent, the "China Internet". All little networks running separate and independent.

Or not. TFA says:

Most of Brazil’s global Internet traffic passes through the United States, so Rousseff’s government plans to lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe and also link to all South American nations to create what it hopes will be a network free of U.S. eavesdropping.

A connection from Brazil to Europe, or connections from Brazil to other South American nations, don't constitute a "Brazil internet"; for one thing, the other ends of those connections aren't located in Brazil. If that were sufficient to create a "Brazil internet", there would already be a "US internet" given that the US has an undersea connection to Europe or connections to Canada and Mexico.

It also says:

Rousseff is urging Brazil’s Congress to compel Facebook, Google and all companies to store data generated by Brazilians on servers physically located inside Brazil in order to shield it from the NSA.

That wouldn't, in and of itself, mean that Brazilians can't find non-Brazilian sites with Google or that non-Brazilians can't find Brazilian sites with Google; it would mean that Google would have to add one or more data centers in Brazil and, for Google searches from within Brazil (presumably meaning "from IP addresses that are located in Brazil"), any information saved about the search would have to be stored on the Brazilian servers (and, presumably, not sent to non-Brazilian servers). It would also mean that Google+ posts from Brazilian users would have to be stored on the Brazilian servers, GMail messages for Brazilian users' accounts would have to be stored on the Brazilian servers, etc. (and, presumably, not sent to non-Brazilian servers).

Today the internet is bigger than any one country - even the NSA can't tap all of it, and it's likely the stuff they tapped they did things like running TOR exit nodes and monitored the data that way.

But tomorrow, the internet will shrivel up (hey, we don't need IPv6 anymore!) as every country runs its own version of the internet, and wanting to connect to the bigger part around it well, you're a terrorist.

I haven't seen anything to indicate that Brazil doesn't want to allow packets to enter or leave Brazil - quite the contrary, in fact, if they want additional connections to countries outside Brazil. That's what would be involved in "each country [running] its own version of the internet".

Won't stop the US, much less the NSA.

[sethstorm]

At any point in that chain, the US can still snoop or put US-friendly people/technology in place.

Re:ballsy move

[Tiger4]

Its a great thing to decentralize from the US. BUT, it could just as easily mean more fragmentation. Just like China has the Great Firewall, Brazil could as easily make you swim the Great River Amazon. No I don't expect them to, but nothing says they can't. And worse, if more countries follow, more fragmentation of the same could make navigating the internet as bad as in the days of dial-up.
Or, you could get the UN and ITU thinking they know how to govern and make it all one big happy bureaucratic world. Leaving US control is good, but there is a lot of bad out there too.

Happening everywhere on all levels

[GodfatherofSoul]

Our Global Suction strategy is blowing up in our face. We were perceived as an honest broker, now we're going to find our control increasingly challenged and marginalized. I've been reading more and more about everyone from individual users to companies to now nations basically giving us the finger. Any tactic we're employing with geopolitical repercussions that can be blown out of the water by one disgruntled contractor was woefully conceived.

I don't know what annoys me more; the dragnetting or the fact that they did such a crappy job of keeping it under wraps.

Re:Happening everywhere on all levels

[ahabswhale]

Wow, you're naive. The NSA just got caught doing what most other countries are doing as well. That's the only difference. Well that, and the NSA is probably a lot better at it than most.

Re:ballsy move

[TechyImmigrant]

Lots more international fibre might be a good thing rather that treating the US as a passive hub.

Consolidate and fracture

[steelfood]

Funny thing is, that's how the internet is supposed to be. The only things that are common are the protocols used to communicate between networks. The idea that everything should be consolidated into one system is not in the spirit of the internet. It is the centralized systems that are ripe for abuse by large organizations. As an aside, terrorists operate in cells rather than with a strong command hierarchy for the same reason.

Now, if the Brazilians can design their own microprocessors and switch to a flavor of Linux, they might have a shot at being secure.

May I be the first to suggest ipv6?

[mark-t]

Because if current rates of adoption are any indication, an ipv6 internet won't be US-centric for years to come.

I called it...

[erroneus]

Trust in anything connected with the US is done. Other governments and other people are VERY aware of what the US influence has been doing. They are also very aware that Brazil's financial systems didn't crash because they didn't do what the rest of the world did. A lot of things aren't being talked about but the leaders know what's what but they don't know how to escape the net which the powers behind the US have put over everyone else. BRIC will make the changes the rest of the world will be inclined to follow.

I never thought there would be a year of Linux on the desktop, but something like it is becoming more and more possible in other nations.

Things are changing and they're going to change a lot more before it's done.

Good

[wjcofkc]

Our government deserves to get slapped in the face at every turn by every other country over the heavy handed and far overreaching actions of the NSA. I hope the condemnations with actions keep rolling in.

Thanks again Snowden. You woke up the world and it's changing for the better because of you.

Dear Facebook....

[freeze128]

BRAZIL: Dear Facebook, please store your data about our citizens on a server that is located in our Country.

Facebook: No.

BRAZIL: Well, then we will just prevent all our citizens from accessing your website...

Facebook: Darn.

Re:ballsy move

[LostMonk]

It might be only hot air on part of Brazil, but you can be sure that most governments of Europe and Scandinavia has similar feelings about it even if they aren't vocalizing it quite the same way.
Every major government right now is doing some serious inspections of where is their data flowing through, where is it stored and how trusty are the interests of those who control them... And you can bet they are not liking the answers they are getting.

Require google and facebook...

[Bert64]

Requiring foreign companies to host data on servers inside brazil isn't going to achieve anything... They are still foreign corporations, and will be able to access those servers and/or copy data off them at any time they want.

What's really needed, is instead of large centrally controlled services like facebook there should be a large number of distributed but openly interoperable services.

This is how the internet has always worked, and how core services like web and email work - anyone can run their own servers, and anyone's servers can talk to anyone else's. If you are worried about foreign spies, you can ensure that you use services operated in countries you trust.

Re:ballsy move

[Teancum]

It wouldn't hurt for Brazil to have more physical connections with other Latin American countries as well as other countries relatively near, such as perhaps a direct link to South Africa and Spain/Portugal (aka something across the Atlantic). Unfortunately west Africa isn't exactly an economic hot spot in the world and would be the easiest to reach.

What I don't understand is why you or anybody else is worried about "fragmentation" on this issue? Fragmentation of IP addresses? I thought IPv6 pretty much solved that problem anyway (with enough address space so every person can have thousands of IP addresses and still have room left over for governments and corporations). Routers can do a pretty good job of finding network addresses in even a very fragmented world infrastructure as that is sort of why they were invented in the first place. Network traffic certainly doesn't need to go into America first.

The "bad old days of dial up access" was mostly an issue of finding an ISP in your neighborhood.... which was eventually solved with pools of dial up access and then widespread DSL coverage. If you are complaining about bandwidth, I hardly think that is going to be a problem with additional links and physical connections between people in more distant parts of the world from the primary corridors of telecommunications. If anything, bandwidth will improve if peripheral edges of networks are connected as well as improving reliability. Fragmentation actually improves things as opposed to making it worse.

Perhaps you are complaining about fragmentation of services like more kinds of websites that are "portals". Would it be a bad thing if those services are broken up and people use things other than Google's gmail?

National Stupid Agency

[TiggertheMad]

Except that, because of the NSA's clusterfuck idiocy, now we have each country building it's own internet, which may or may not actually be part of a larger global network. Expect more of this in the future. It is the state's version of a 'walled garden' platform.

Thanks for shitting in the pool, NSA.

Re:National Stupid Agency

[gmuslera]

So is ok that US does it to all the world because other countries maybe doing it?

Even if the other countries, at most, and the ones that does it, does mostly in their own population or internal connections (and for those, how many started shortly after the arab spring? if some external power is social engineering a revolution is better to be aware of it). US not only does that on all the world, their citizens and all the foreing ones that are within their reach (and not just the ones that are connecting in that moment with US servers), but also is getting ready to fire cyberattacks on critical structure.

They are shitting, pissing, and puking in the pool. They don't just they spy, force manufacturers to put backdoors in their products and plant logical timebombs in all other countries critical infrastructure, but they are forcing other countries to protect themselves. If over that, those governments does their own quote of surveillance, is anyway a small drop in the ocean that the US is doing.

Re:National Stupid Agency

[rastos1]

while the US is probably in the top 5 when it comes to means, it is also more likely to get outed, because whistle blowers are given a platform and do not fear being "disappeared" for their actions.

Are you serious? Does it mean that Assange may leave the Ecuadorean embassy, Manning did not have to spend almost a year "under Prevention of Injury status", Snowden does not have to fear torture when he get's back to US and the whole Patriot act and FISA court did not happen? What a relief!