Slashdot Mirror
In Brazil, Police Overstep Court Order To Sieze Former President's Email
New submitter MythicalMan writes: During the search and seizure in the Lula Institute last Friday, [Brazil's] Federal Police threatened a computer technician with being taken under arrest, forcing him to give the administrator password of all email accounts @institutolula.org (hosted at Google). Such generic access was not granted by the court's mandate, which referred only to a few specific email accounts. See the information here (in Portuguese). The fact is worrying not only because of its illegality but also for its possible international repercussions, since Lula Institute corresponds with institutions, public figures and heads of state all around the world. Investigations of corruption in Brazil have been characterized by frequent leaks to the press and to opposition politicians who use them to attack the government of President Dilma Rousseff. The methods used by Brazilian prosecutors have been questioned not only by government supporters, but also by jurists, scholars and journalists.
Yikes?
FORA DILMA! LULA NA CADEIA!
...to seize evidence of criminal wrongdoing?
Dirty Harry would murder a hundred innocent bystanders to get that punk who thought he could get away. And people would applaud him.
This country is, after all, a a banana republic, what else can anyone else expect ?
The word is spelt "seize", mmkay?
And 'spelt' is a type of grain.
But back on topic, this is Brazil we're talking about. Legality is the last thing the Police are concerned with.
The article, written and hosted by instituto lula itself, should be taken with a grain of salt The institute is already under investigation because of massive cases corruption.
Also, someone leaked that the police would be seizing the institute, and they emptied it from most of its documents. Its like watergate in here, and the judge presiding the investigation has a lot of popular support because he is finally going for people which seemed to be untouchable in the past.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
sensitive political e-mail was hosted at Google? Smart. It's like an open invitation to DoJ etc. to just read what they need, remove what they want, and insert what they need to try to dictate the outcome.
Such generic access was not granted by the court's mandate, which referred only to a few specific email accounts. See the information here (in Portuguese).
It's important to note that the source is from Instituto Lula itself, which is the one being investigated.
There are legal procedures which the institute itself make take if it believes it was illegal,
but it seems that they limited themselves merely to blog that. Why?
Look at the source cited by this post, it's their own website. Lula and his institute are known for trying to manipulate public opinion in every possible way, but I not even for a second thought they would end up spreading their s*** on Slashdot.
TFS puts a negative spin on the government's efforts investigate Brazil's broad corruption scandal, but the TFA's show overwhelming support by the Brazilian public and court systems:
"Many Brazilians believe that our existing legal system is poorly equipped to handle such massive illegality that is larger than the justice system itself," he said.
Crucially, Moro's [presiding Judge over the case] tactics have won the backing of higher courts in dealing with Brazil's biggest ever corruption scandal, in which a cartel of builders overcharged Petrobras for contracts, paying bribes to company directors and kickbacks to politicians.
Prosecutors have struck more than a dozen plea bargain deals and none of them have been denied by the Supreme Court, which has to approve testimony before it can be accepted as evidence.
This is such a huge corruption scandal that's gone on over a decade, Brazil is going to have to be very aggressive to clean the rot out of the system. Stories about "overreach" are coming from wealthy criminals who have hired reputation management/PR flacks feeding stories to gullible/corrupt journalists.
would do anything against the law, right?
Thanks for the siezure warning.
I'm pretty sure Slashdot is a US site. From where did you get that EU thing?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Enter password:
HelpThereIsAGunToMyHead
Your account has been encrypted and the password changed to a random password, and it cannot be unlocked pending confirmation of your safety or a legal court order. No password can unlock your account. The local police in your area have been alerted. Good luck.
This is all misdirection from an institute that exists solely to make legal to the biggest companies in Brazil to donate millions upon millions of dollars to the corrupt leaders of Brazil to gain favors like big contracts in the case of construction companies and an crazy monetary policy in the case to give the banks here the best profit that any bank in the world can only dream.
Until now the president Dilma Rousseff and former president Lula da Silva are not directly indicted by the federal police. But lots of their friends, including the owners, directors and heads of international construction companies like Odebrecht are already in jail.
Marcelo Odebrecht, that donated millions to the Lula Institute are already in jail. He is a personal friend of Lula and his company wins lots of the biggest government contracts to make buildings for the Fifa World Cup and for the Olympics Games that are going to happen at 05 of August in Brazil. Marcelo is one of the richest man in Brazil with a fortune of more than 3.5 billion dollars. Marcelo Odebrecht company also made freeways in USA and in lots of other countries.
Alexandrino Alencar, Odebrecht C-Level figure, used to travel together with Lula many times, Alexandrino is also in jail.
Lula is the most populist person imaginable. Banks and huge construction companies gained an unprecedented level of profit in his two mandates and in the (already) second mandate of Dilma that is from his party. At the same time lots of people think he is the poor guy that is going to face the capitalist corporations in favor of the poor. They see him like a modern Robin Wood. Lots of people even want to die for this former president.
Anyway, the great majority of the population, now, are seeing that this populist steal tons of money from the tax that the people of Brazil pay for his personal gains and to maintain himself and his party in the power. Talking about tax, Brazil is one of the countries with the most expensive cellphones, cars, gas, computers, televisions, etc.. in the world because of the extreme tax rates that we pay.
The educational system here in Brazil is completely broken, you can search about that with google and you are going to see that schools here are creating an army of illiterates.
I and lots of friends that voted for Lula in the past, believed that he is truly a guy that cares for the well being of Brazilians.. we are very.. very wrong. This guy and Dilma Rousseff are destroying this country together with a legion of corrupt politicians that infest the government of Brazil.
Well, I live in Brazil and I know that what the police wasn't 100% right. BUT, unfortunately our laws are very flawed and the system is full of bureaucracy that can delay by a long time or make the actions not come to be. In this fight against corruption in Brazil, I think the police in some circunstancies should bypass the law to obtain a greater good. I'm just tired of our politicians taking a lot of our monthly income with high taxes and giving little/nothing back.
This topic has been discussed on the (former) TrueCrypt forums a lot.
For hard disks and such, a "self destruct" password would be useless. Any forensic person would be running stuff against an image of the HDD, and a "self destruct" code will mean a re-ask of the password after liberal application of a rubber hose or some high voltage electrical device to various parts of the body.
For people demanding access to remote accounts, a duress password (something that allows access, then shuts down access, locking the user out) is VERY useful... but there is no support for it, either by AD or any other directory system. I have heard stories that some countries will demand people authenticate to their company's sites as a matter of course by border/customs. In previous jobs, it was policy for a remote admin to have their AD admin rights pulled, or if the company was smart, the admin account was locked, so the user had full access to their user's stuff, but not much else, just in case.
The best defense against this is VeraCrypt. Get asked to open a disk, they can have at it. Even better is PhonebookFS, but that project seems to have been abandoned. The nice thing about PhonebookFS is that one can have different layers, and with randomly generated chaff, there is no way to tell how many layers are present.
and I'm Brazilian - the traditional media here seems to hide facts from the public, treating manipulation of the "common opinion" as a business model...
:/
* Brazilian media is better described as an oligopoly : the National Constitution explicit forbids crossed property of TV, radio and newspaper (as common in other markets, ie, FCC make something like it in US...), but the media owners ignore that to the point it is a joke nowadays
Come on PT, even on Slashdot? Lula is clearly guilty of a dozen crimes (to be judged), he is the chief, the head, the capo. Please accept the facts and stop making him look like a victim of political prosecution - his party rules the country for 13 years now.
This summary is full of misinformation, and it's very biased. MythicalMan's previous submissions show how slanted he is about Brazilian politics.
The allegations of illegality mentioned in the summary are backed up by a link to the Instituto Lula's website itself, hardly a neutral, trustworthy party.
As to the Yahoo article, it has been grossly summarized, and also contains errors itself. There has been no detention without charges, only detentions before trial, as some of the accused have tried to leave the country and nearly all of them have the means to do so. Lula, for instance, wasn't put under arrest, he had refused the previous two requests to provide testimony, so they got a court order authorizing his forced deposition. He still had the constitutional right to remain silent, and was free to go after providing his testimony.
Why on earth is this kind of partisan crap being published on Slashdot?
Now the Brazilian police are going to see all the correspondence between me and that Brazilian swimsuit model that's been emailing me!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And make no mistake, ex president Lula is a crook.
And you're nationalists
Most of what is in the article has been invented without factual basis.
There is a huge politic crisis in this (irrelevant) and weird country sitting in one of the most corrupt regions in this world, South America.
Government is going down. Former corrupt president "Lula" and his congregates are going down. They are going to jail.
Brazil suffered an incommensurable heist supported by local ignorant people. Now the country is moving toward a violent crash
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21684779-disaster-looms-latin-americas-biggest-economy-brazils-fall
So the source is nothing more than a corrupt gang going down screaming... At least this damned country is doing something.
seu esquerdista de merda!!!
We are in what is called the "end game." This show has been put on for us that government is corrupt, so we cheer our police to go in and punish government and take over. We end up with the police state (which we have had for a many years).
In the name of "corruption" the police will take everything over and rule by decree.
There is no evidence that this really occurred. It's an accusation until it is proved. The cited article is from the Instituto Lula, which may be posing as victim for its own convenience.
+1, but no mod points.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Kind of like the National Socialists.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
This post is clearly biased. Brazil has no effective privacy laws. The law "Marco Civil da Internet" allows the police to request the access but doesn't impose the form. The police process is legit according to brazilian laws. The former President is being accused of several crimes, as well the current President is the process of, that means she may be involved in bribery, money laundry, etc. Impeachment is legit in Brazil, and it will appreciated in the lower chamber very soon.
Dammit, another troll. Go Back to facebook
Lula and the PT created a chaos in Brazilian politics for the purpose of obstructing the investigation of the Federal Police, federal prosecutors and federal courts in corruption cases in which Lula and the government are involved!
Even the federal government is considering naming Lula as Minister of the Federal Government in order to ensure you privileged forum and remove investigations of ordinary authorities! A real mobsters scheme and bandits!
Lula Institute and Lula are not innocent, but perpetrators! And one of the country's biggest corruption scandals!
They're going after the most powerful people in the country. People who have corrupted and subverted all the systems of governance, including justice. Prosecutorial excess may be the only way to overcome the power and influence of the targets. And they have managed to take down people previously thought untouchable, like the international construction mogul that just got a lengthy prison sentence.
(confusing, huh?)
According to the U.S. Geological Survey there are currently 34 populated places in 25 states named Springfield throughout the United States, including five in Wisconsin; additionally, there are at least 36 Springfield Townships, including 11 in Ohio. ;)
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
MAVs finally have reached slashdot. Mortadelas know no limits.
Instituto Lula is also accused of destroying evidence, having its director and Lula itself under federal investigation for corruption crimes.
With a bit of luck they will rot in jail!