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Imminent Server Seizure Tests Brazil's New Internet Bill of Rights
sunbird (96442) writes "Less than one week after passing the Marco Civil da Internet, Article 3 of which purports to protect free expression and privacy of personal data from government intrusion, a Public Prosecutor in Brazil is seeking to seize a server hosting research groups, social movements, discussion lists and other tools. The server is hosted by the Saravá Group, which has adopted a policy of not storing connection logs to protect the privacy of users. The Public Prosecutor is seeking to identify individuals involved in Rádio Mudo, a project hosted by Saravá, but as Saravá does not store logs, there is no information on the server that is responsive to the investigation. This action comes as Brazil seeks to place itself in the forefront of protecting internet privacy after it hosted the Net Mundial conference. Saravá has called for a protest action today at 1PM local time (9AM PT/12noonET) to protest against the seizure."
Muda, not Mudo.
This misspelling changed the meaning from Change Radio to Mute Radio. WTF submitter and editors, this is not rocket science.
As a result, Saravá's site is down. Here's a mirror of the original statement from Saravá. Also, here's an amusing picture of the group putting new drives in to try to get the site back up.
they are full of shit.
All the noises they;ve made about protecting rights and speech are just lies. They are desperately trying to look like a "people first" nation in the run up to the FIFA World Cup, to counter and quell the unrest at home relating to the spiralling cost of hosting the tournament.
The law was passed with the "intention" of being the Brazilian "net neutrality" law. However, its chapter 1, article 1, paragraph 8 reads: "VIII - a liberdade dos modelos de negócios promovidos na Internet, desde que não conflitem com os demais princípios estabelecidos nesta Lei."
Freely translating, that could be read as "the freedom to shape internet businesses, as long as it doesn't conflict with the rest of this Law."
Chapter 3, article 9, paragraph 1 later states that net traffic may only be regulated by the President's orders, and can only happen in 2 cases:
- Technical requirements necessary to the proper functioning of services and applications;
- Emergency services
And then I see carriers offering free Facebook and Twitter access as long as you have any valid plan active, or any sort of credit left on pre-paid plans.
Who didn't understand what "net neutrality" means? Me, the government, these companies or the people praising the law?
Article 3's translation says "protecting personal data, as provided by law". So a prosecutor going to a judge to gain access to a server does not seem to violate the bill of rights. The article's goal seems to be to stop the type of snooping the NSA is accused of, not impede a court of law.
There's an agency that regulates communications in Brazil and to have a working radio you need a permit (long history of oligopoly here, they don't give the permit). Radio Muda doesn't have the permit, that's the problem. The seizure is also happening on any other non registered radios in the city.
Also, the prosecutor is claiming security issues with interference on airplanes. They are a radio inside Brazil's #2 university with top engineers saying there's no way they are causing any safety problems, so that's a blatant lie from the prosecutor.
Eight other radio stations were seized in February. As much as it's a terrible thing and it just shows how the State is used against the people, this is really not related to Marco Civil or the fact that they are not logging anything.
So much as just being full of shit. What I mean by that is that people in general, but governments in particular seem to be great at doublethink. They can seem to hold two different contradictory opinions in their head. So governments hate, HATE the idea of other governments spying on them and their citizens. They don't like foreign governments messing with their businesses, either.
However they see no problem when they do it. They don't even find it hypocritical. It is IMPORTANT and NECESSARY when they do it, you see. Not at all like those assholes in other countries!
I think that is probably what is going on with Brazil. They see the US's actions as deplorable, their own actions as essential. They really don't see a dichotomy there.
Only US more corrupt than Brazil.
Exact. The only radio stations "authorized" to operate here are those whose owners are right wing politicians and entrepreneurs of the mainstream media who do not want voices disagreeing with what they say is the truth.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
While this is true, "Radio Muda" has been operating without any sort of permit *REQUEST* for 20 years. Not even for experimental operation, with reduced power. And that's in an University that has a body of at least 100 top-quality EEs in the faculty, some of them IEEE fellows, and they produce at least 40 EE undergraduates and a few EE graduates per year, any of which would be quite capable of drafting a FM broadcasting station permit request in about 8 hours of work if they don't know the ANATEL procedures, or about 15 minutes if they do and all the transmitter documentation is available. It is easy, I've done that where I work, and I am one of that universitie's alumni. But NOBODY FROM RADIO MUDA EVER ASKED THE EE DEPARTMENT ANY HELP TO GET SUCH A PERMIT AS FAR AS I CAN CHECK IN ANATEL'S SYSTEM.
What they are not telling you is that the people behind "Radio Muda" are mostly a bunch of useless idiots, and not always of the "mostly harmless" sort, either. Some were thieves, and minor drug trafficants. I was a student there more than a decade ago, and maybe two of the people involved with the Radio where serious journalism students, the rest was a bunch of hobos that took advantage of student housing and caused trouble, but were utterly useless as students and as future professionals. I am not sure how much things changed in that regard, but it looks like they did not change enough.
What they're also not telling you is that Radio Muda was closed along with a lot of other unlicensed radios, and that there is a history in Campinas/SP/Brazil of such radios operating too close, or directly in colision with air traffic-control and worse, ILS (or whatever the new acronym for the better system they've recently installed) and other aircraft landing data feeds. This makes the regulator body rather grumphy. I doubt Radio Muda was direclly guilty of that one, because it operated in a rather safe frequency (thus at most it would screw up other FM broadcast stations if their transmitter drifted)... but certainly not because there was any of the EE properly taking care of it: there wasn't. It was closed among the rest of the unauthorized broadcasting stations, and that's it.
What is rather impressive is that it took 20 years for the regulator body to do something about it. Something to look into, they should have been closed a long time ago, so the "why the heck now" and "why the heck it took too long" questions ARE pertinent and should be investigated. Shaddy political reasons might indeed exist for both...
Now, why the hell people are linking "Radio Muda" (an unauthorized FM broadcasting station that operated for over 20 years without even bothering to request a permit, which would likely have been granted if it was requested 10 years ago -- both the federal government and municipal goverment where left-wing and there were a lot of UNICAMP alumni working in ANATEL) and the Saravá group servers, I don't know. The radio was not closed because of Saravá, nor is the police investigating the Saravá servers over Radio Muda.
In Brazil laws come in effect after a period of time after being published (this must be the case with most laws in most countries). Art. 32 of the new law says it will start counting 60 days from being officially published, that will be on June 22th. Here is the link for the law in the government website: L12968, just go to the very end, it's the last one.
Also, art. 15 states that internet applications (websites/services?) providers that are organized as companies, and provide the application in an organized, professional and for profit way, are required to keep the 6 months logs (that should have only ip and connection times). I don't believe that's Radio Muda's case, but we'll find out after the law comes in effect.
I'm against the seizure, always liked the people from the radio, am against the communications regulating agency in Brazil, do think radios should be free to operate without being related to the oligarchies controlling the country. But this has nothing to do with the new law.
While I understand your point, have you ever tried to get a permit to operate a radio? Maybe the folks at Radio "Muda" simply do not bother to try to get one precisely because they would never receive (remember, permissions are given only to friends of the king), they following all the rules or not.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Thanks for the post. I've always assumed there was EE people involved with Radio Muda. I'm not sure there's anything that would help to get the permit though. They might try to get it now that they are being seized constantly, we'll see if the university will be of any help.
Here's a communique from SaravÃ:
https://www.sarava.org/en/node...
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
The problem is that it cannot be analyzed in a vacuum. Yes, in a vacuum it's just a free service being offered if you have a plan. But that's the first step into making things a lot worse. And quite frankly, Brazil is not known for being good at telling the difference and knowing when to stop the car before it crashes.
Besides that, if you take the law to the letter, you also run into another issue: What if a customer wants to access G+ (why would they do that??) instead of Facebook and Twitter? They have to pay for the data used, and that is discouraging to any social network besides FB and Twitter. This alone is against the concept of net neutrality. And this is exactly the point I was showing.