Leading discussions on global regulations for virtual privacy and surveillance is a rare role for an emerging country, but Brazil had been doing so for more than a decade.
Edward Snowden’s 2014 bomb detailing the U. S. National Security Agency’s virtual surveillance activities replaced everything. This included revelations that the firm had spied on Brazilian oil company Petrobras, and even communications from then-President Dilma Rousseff. The leaks led the Brazilian government to adopt some of the virtual ”declarations of ” rights for its citizens, and then lawmakers approved a knowledge coverage measure based heavily on the European GDPR.
But the country has now taken a more authoritarian path: last October, President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree requiring all federal agencies to share the wealth of knowledge they possess about Brazilian citizens and consolidate them into a centralized knowledge base, cadastro Base do Cidado. (basic citizen registration).
The government says it needs to use knowledge in public facilities and reduce crime, yet critics warn that Bolsonaro’s far-right leaders can use knowledge to spy on political dissidents.
For the September/October factor of MIT Technology Review, journalist Richard Kemeny explains how the government’s resolve to centralize civil knowledge can lead to a human rights disaster in South America’s largest economy. This week at Deep Tech, he joins our editor at -director, Gideon Lichfield, to talk about why the country’s shift towards techno-authoritarianism is accelerating through the coronavirus pandemic.
Check out the Deep Tech episodes here.
CBN News Presenter: A new report indicates that the National Security Agency spied on the presidents of Brazil and Mexico. The journalist who revealed the NSA’s internal espionage story told a Brazilian news program that emails from the two leaders were being intercepted. NSA Edward Snowden leak data report.
Gideon Lichfield: Edward Snowden leaks in 2014 revealed that US national security firm has not been able to do so. But it’s not the first time He had spied on people’s communications around the world and countries where he collected the utmost knowledge Brazil.
That same year, as a reaction to Snowden’s leaks, the Brazilian government followed the Civil Framework – a type of Internet “declaration of rights” for its citizens. And in 2018, the Brazilian Congress would pass a knowledge coverage law strongly modeled on the revolutionary European GDPR.
But a little two years later, things are very different, Brazil is on a techno-authoritarian trajectory.
Last October, President Jair Bolsonaro signed a law that requires federal agencies to provide a maximum percentage of their knowledge of Brazilian citizens and consolidate it into a gigantic centralized knowledge base.
This includes knowledge of everything from employment to fitness records and biometric data, such as your face and voiceprint.
The government says all this deserves to help public facilities and combat crime, but under a far-right president who has taken strong action against civil liberties, it is more like a way to facilitate espionage for dissidents.
Today I speak to Richard Kemeny, a journalist founded in Sao Paulo, his account of our newest factor, the techno-nationalism factor, explains how the coronavirus pandemic drives Brazil’s slide into a state of vigilance.
I am Gideon Lichfield, editor of MIT Technology Review and I am Deep Tech.
Richard, Brazil has this story of being complex in Internet governance and virtual civil rights. Tell us a little bit about this, how did it start?
Richard Kemeny: Of course, I mean, you know, a long time ago in the 1990s, when everything that was happening on the Internet was starting out, Brazil was really a pretty progressive voice and a leader in conversation. As it made its way into society, Brazil created a framework known as the Internet Steering Committee, whose task was to facilitate the transition from the Internet to society and improve its development.
Gideon Lichfield: Okay. So, in 2014, Edward Snowden leaked the NSA spy intelligence files on other people around the world, and that had a big effect in Brazil, didn’t it?
Richard Kemeny: That’s right. One of the main friction problems was that it was discovered that the NSA had hacked Petrobras, the state oil company, and this has been perceived as an affront to Brazil, especially friend because he is America’s best friend. And that led this government that then led through Dilma Rousseff to launch the Civil Framework, which is necessarily an Internet bill of rights, and was taken as a style for other countries, such as Italy, which they intended to establish up to something similar.
Gideon Lichfield: And then, a few years later, Brazil passed a knowledge privacy law that also looks to the future.
Richard Kemeny: That’s right. It has been strongly modeled on the European GDPR. The Lei Geral de Protecao de Dados. LGPD. Así, the LGPD also establishes the privacy rights of citizens’ knowledge and also protects it so that they know how their knowledge is used and that used in a proportionate way.
Richard Kemeny: So Brazilian society relied on this culture of openness and transparency on such issues, something that referred to public debate and public opinion, and that’s all that’s been replaced in recent years.
Gideon Lichfield: And when did this start?
Richard Kemeny: That’s how it was after Dilma Rousseff’s dismissal that she left in 2016. And he brought a presentation by President Michel Temer, he brought the LGPD but vetoed some of them. So I diluted it in some tactics, particularly related to the punishment of law-breaking bodies. And this trend then continued under the rule of Jair Bolsonaro, who voted in 2018.
Gideon Lichfield: Now Bolsonaro is right. And in Brazil many things are carried in a more authoritative direction. What are you doing about the rights to knowledge and virtual rights?
Richard Kemeny: Certainly, the biggest motion came in October 2019, when Blue President Bolsonaro signed a decree requiring all public bodies to start sharing citizens’ data more or less freely with each other, which surprised many observers. It was anything that wasn’t publicly discussed, a lot of people didn’t see it coming.
Gideon Lichfield: So why does the government say it wants all this centralized data?
Richard Kemeny: So the reasoning of the decree, according to the public line, was to improve the quality and coherence of the government’s knowledge of citizens. made in the past invisible to the government. By the end of April, around 46 million people had registered for emergency monetary assistance.
Gideon Lichfield: What percentage of agency knowledge and what percentage of knowledge?
Richard Kemeny: That includes all public bodies that have data on citizens and knowledge is very broad. This ranges from facial data, biometrics, voice knowledge, to the way other people walk and all this data is poured into a vast knowledge base, which was also created under the decree: Cadastro Base do Cidado or Basic Register of Citizens.
Gideon Lichfield: Okay, as a result, all those federal agencies can now share knowledge. As far as we know, have there been examples of agencies exchanging knowledge in this way?
Richard Kemeny: One of the things that came to light in June was the leaked articles to The Intercept, which showed that ABIN, the security agency, had asked for the knowledge of 76 million Brazilian citizens, all with a driver’s license. It was thought that this was perhaps the first known use of this degree to cause a giant entry of knowledge.
Gideon Lichfield: In other words, has the Brazilian national security firm just emptied the knowledge of 76 million people without having to justify why it sought it?
Richard Kemeny: Exactement. It seemed that there was no need for justification because of the decree. And this kind of gigantic amount of data is considered disproportionate.
Gideon Lichfield: Brazil uses a lot more surveillance technology, right?Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Richard Kemeny: Yes, it’s true, like many countries around the world, Brazil has increased the number and use of surveillance equipment. There was a marked increase when Brazil hosted the World Cup in 2014 and followed the Olympic Games in 2016 That’s when the surveillance generation actually came in here and, of course, since then, the generation has remained.
Gideon Lichfield: And when we communicate about surveillance generation, what kind of generation are we communicating about?
Richard Kemeny: basically generation of facial popularity. Facial popularity, cameras installed in cities to monitor crime and, in fact, police forces are increasingly of this generation to stumble upon the symptoms of crime. Clearly, this is useful in countries such as Brazil, where homicide rates are approximately five times higher than those in the average world and where crime is considered a major challenge in society.
Gideon Lichfield: In our other podcast, on We Trust Machines, we looked at some of those related to the use of facial popularity for police. What are they in Brazil?
Richard Kemeny: So one of the disorders is that facial popularity generation evolves widely through Western researchers and is created largely by using white face data, for example, in a country like Brazil, where most of the population is black. or brown, this can pose serious disorders in misidentification of criminals.
Richard Kemeny: Especially in some areas where crime is highest and poverty levels are too. You can believe a scenario in which a deficient black boy is misrepresented thanks to facial popularity technology. He can’t a lawyer. In fact, it’s a scenario where no one needs to be put.
Gideon Lichfield: And this centralized knowledge record, cadastro, obviously raises considerations because government agencies must get all the knowledge they need about who they need. What kind of other considerations are there?
Richard Kemeny: I mean, one of the main considerations about having this information so consolidated and centralized is that it becomes a huge honey canister for criminals.
Therefore, Brazil has a sad history of sensitive knowledge that can be discovered on the Internet. In 2016, Sao Paulo presented medical data for 365,000 patients in the public fitness system.
Then, in 2018, the tax identification numbers of another 120 million people were omitted on the Internet and this was basically due to the fact that someone had accidentally renamed the record the wrong way. So this kind of thing, if you imagine, have the centralized knowledge base with as much citizen knowledge as possible, all in one place, whether hacked by criminals or simply as a result of some kind of accidental escape, presents a massive security risk. And the one that many is not justified by the possible benefits can bring.
Gideon Lichfield: We have this gigantic centralized login of citizen knowledge and are increasingly in surveillance and facial recognition. Put those two together, what dangers does that create?
Richard Kemeny: So, as a whole, this vast knowledge base related to creating a generation of surveillance that is being used more freely and more widely in the country is something I talked about with Rafael Zanatta, who is the director of the NGO Data Brasil. Privacy. Expressed its fear that knowledge of citizens gaining public facilities such as social assistance will be used to build political profiles that may simply be targeted by the government.
Rafael Zanatta: Hence it is quite imaginable to make very harsh and accurate inferences about political settlement based on the wealth of knowledge and the beneficiaries of public policies, hence we believe that the kind of threat we have lately with the Cadastro do Cidado base is similar. to what we had in the 1970s during the army dictatorship that it is conceivable that certain parts of the army’s intelligence network perceive political models, fix models, and make inferences based on those unified knowledge bases.
And this is very worrying for Brazil because in countries of maximum democracy, the intelligence network is involved in threats from abroad, so the intelligence network is involved in who terrorist teams or foreigners are, or external threats that can challenge establishments within the territory. democratic framework of a country. But in Brazil, what we have noticed in recent years is that the intelligence network looks similar nationally. They think the threats are inside. They deserve to actively monitor Instagram accounts, Twitter accounts and social media to perceive who the protesters and opponents are in the country.
Richard Kemeny: Rafael says the effects of Brazil’s continued slide towards techno-authoritarianism can be catastrophic for human rights in the near future.
Rafael Zanatta: Imagine that you can faint on a walk in a small town in Brazil and cross a public square because you need to buy popcorn or ice cream, and then a facial popularity camera in this square captures your face, sends it to a local security database and this local database of its municipality , your city council, is connected to the Department of Justice with the federal government.
And they go through this database and identify that you’ve actually been prosecuted for a political crime. An attempt to disrupt the federal passing government or something, because you’ve been actively concerned with certain Instagram and Twitter conversations that are considered dangerous. And, in fact, there’s a criminal investigation into you that you weren’t aware of.
And then this federal database that is connected to the municipality is at the same time moving to the Cadastro do Cidado base that has a link to the controlled database through ABIN and a secondary army intelligence network that recognizes that you are a risk and sets an alarm formula that orders the police to go through there and take you back to gunn. I’m arranged to arrest you and take you into custody. This is not the life I need my children to have.
That is why it is so vital to have public commitments on the part of the government with the Data Protection Act, because it is a law that reinforces the concept of restrictive purposes and that an express unit of government has an express mandate to process knowledge only for reason.
Gideon Lichfield: So, this vast centralized knowledge base now, however, Brazil still has that knowledge coverage law that it passed in 2018. These two things seem contradictory, how do they work together?
Richard Kemeny: So, in theory, the Data Protection Act deserves to ensure the correct and proportionate use of citizens’ knowledge, which means that knowledge will be taken through an organization, used expressly, for an express purpose, then erased or destroyed or subsequently returned; and it also deserves to make sure that citizens know precisely how their knowledge is used and, in theory, deserve to be able to settle for its use for this reason. this law may well use datasets and data based on how the law is implemented and how it is controlled.
For example, some of the other people I spoke to in reporting this article explained that there were inconsistencies between the decree that brought this knowledge base and the exchange of knowledge and the new knowledge law, the LGPD. For example, biometric knowledge must be very sensitive under the PDPA, however, in the decree it can still be shared between agencies.
And in practice, it is not transparent which law will succeed over which and how this data will be monitored. As a result, the government had tried to delay the implementation of WFP until May next year, raising reasons as corporations not being able to prepare for the law the pandemic. Since the article was published, the Senate has really voted against the government and the law will come into effect this year.
Therefore, there is one firm that monitors the use of the knowledge base, there is another that monitors how the knowledge coverage law is implemented, and then there is a separate advisory framework on the most sensible of that. So, in theory, these multiple layers are offering a climax of independence and a highlight of compliance with those laws; however, the strength of these independent bodies depends entirely on those in those positions, and ultimately the decisions of those bodies are the responsibility of the president.
Gideon Lichfield: How did the pandemic drive this government intuition to accumulate more knowledge and monitor repression?
Richard Kemeny: So we’ve noticed this trend of access to knowledge that increases the pandemic. In April, the president signed a decree imloring telecommunications companies to pass on the knowledge of 226 million Brazilian citizens to the statistical organization of the state under the pretext of tracking the source of income and employment of the pandemic.
This was thought of as an incredibly disproportionate knowledge entry, largely because, in the past, the amount of data needed to accomplish this task was much smaller and, moreover, the fact that the federal government or the president denied the severity of the virus. This means that it is much more just to enter as much data as possible. And in the end, it was considered unconstitutional and disproportionate and the Supreme Court overstealed it.
Gideon Lichfield: So it turns out that Brazil is at a turning point, it has this increasingly authoritarian trend, which consolidates knowledge and increases surveillance, but still has a strong civil society and a repulsive judicial system. be played?
Richard Kemeny: Absolutely. So, on the spectrum of how countries manage citizens’ knowledge, privacy and vigilance; If you have China at one end, a state of vigilance, which controls the habit of citizens, and at the other end: in a progressive position like Estonia, where citizens’ data are decentralized and no establishment has all the knowledge in its institutional basket. Brazil charting its own path to the middle, because you are under those pressures from this federal government of knowledge entry, knowledge shaping and greater vigilance, but on the other hand, you have those forged contractual balances, Congress and Senate, judicial system. And a multitude of NGOs that push those tendencies into government almost every turn.
Gideon Lichfield: That’s all for this episode of Deep Tech. This is a podcast reserved for MIT Technology Review subscribers, to bring to life what our hounds are thinking and writing. Richard Kemeny’s article “A Record to Govern Them All” is presented in the magazine’s September factor.
Deep Tech is written and produced through Anthony Green and edited through Jennifer Strong and Michael Reilly. I’m Gideon Lichfield.